The Carrier Continued
by RaiRoRa
Summary: Starting (almost) seamlessly where the previous story ended ... So it could've ended well, but after the 'happily-ever-after' things rarely really end happily, and certainly not ever after. Louisiana is broke, Magdalena is determined not to become its Queen and Eric is ... well, Eric. Throw Sookie Stackhouse into the mix and things are bound to get complicated.
1. Chapter 1

"So," Pam whispered conspiratorially, "how bulgy were they?"  
"I'm sorry: _what_?" I hissed. I was hurrying down the carpeted stairs, on my way to a meeting with the Louisiana Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And I was late.  
"His eyes," she said. "How bulgy did they get when you told him once again that you didn't want a ceremony of symbiosis?"  
I sighed. "Oh, _Pam_."  
"Come on," she said, a note of teasing in her voice. "Would you say it was a six? A seven? Did he do that thing where he pretends to stare at something in the middle-distance so he doesn't kill you? Did that phantom vein pulse in his forehead?"  
She was laughing out loud now, her gleeful, cackling laugh. From my position of authority, I probably should have told her off for mocking our liege lord, but instead I didn't even break my stride, just gave her a nudge with my elbow and told her to shut up.  
"Well," she said, "at least he didn't lock you in a closet this time."  
That brought me to a halt.  
"Pamela," I said warningly. She looked at me, assessing me, then backed down.  
"Only joking," she said and turned abruptly away, taking the side stairs down to reception, leaving me to continue on my way.

I kept going, but a little more slowly. My first half-year at Eric's side had been a steep learning curve. It was, in truth, a vertical learning curve up a slippery, icy slope, – steep enough to require mental ice picks and a strong rope, I thought. He had taken over a kingdom that was not only broke but, it transpired, in crippling debt. Barely had Queen Catherine's remains been scraped off the ballroom floor when New Orleans' most prominent bankers came knocking at his throne-room door, looking to remind him that he not only inherited her title but also her financial obligations. Her lavish, purpose-built palace, with its state suites and apartments, its four-star hotel and Michelin-starred restaurant had been financed on promises and, perhaps, a little glamouring. The Queen's financial advisors were quick to offer us the advice that she had ignored: there was money to be made in the hotel, convention centre and restaurant, as humans and vampires alike were keen on the whole New Orleans vampire experience. Before January was out, we had vacated her sumptuous apartment; by Valentine's Day it was being rented out for horrendous sums to anyone who could pay for the honour of spending the night in a real vampire queen's suite. We, on the other hand, were living in an apartment over the indoor tennis court, one that had originally been earmarked for the hotel's day manager. We had a bedroom, a living room, a study, a kitchenette and a bathroom that had been, most likely, an afterthought rather than an integral part of the apartment's planning.

I was in a strange twilight world: a human among vampires. The king's – wife? Consort? Unpaid private secretary? No one was quite sure what I was and it made the vampires uneasy. Eric was pushing to have us go to Dublin for a Ceremony of Symbiosis at the European headquarters, pretending that it was because he "wanted to take our relationship to the next level." Every time he said it, I made fake-gagging noises and pretended to stick a finger down my throat. We both knew it would simply make a lot of stuff easier, make my position – my remaining alive in a nest of vampires – safer. And being publicly joined to the daughter of one of the Empress's loyal retainers by said Empress in one of the world's oldest vampire kingdoms with all the bells and whistles of an ancient vampire ceremony would only help cement Eric's butt more firmly to the Louisianan throne. I, on the other hand, could not imagine anything worse than all of the high-octane drama that would surround it. While Eric liked to sneer at all of the pomp and ceremony, he was actually not averse to the kow-towing and cap-doffing. When he was the one at the centre of it, of course.

And because Louisiana was America's vampire capital, its historic centre, we were caught up in a charade of formality that had been all but abandoned when the king's seat had been in Shreveport.  
("Can't we move back up there?" I begged Eric again and again, usually when I was being laced into yet another ballgown for yet another formal event.  
"No," came the short but inevitable answer).  
Sitting in a smaller throne just below Eric at his right hand, I was deeply uncomfortable, literally and figuratively. Pinned into formal dresses, I had to sit through a lot of vampire brouhaha, watching Eric scheme and manipulate, pulling his subjects into line.

My unexpected ally in this mire of bowing and scraping was the tall, spare vampire with the plummy voice, whom I'd first met at Queen Catherine's fateful ball many moons ago. It seems that we – or, specifically, I had inherited him upon Catherine's demise. He simply transferred his loyalty from one monarch to the next as smoothly as one might transfer a wallet from one pocket to another. While Catherine had called him Patrick, I could never bring myself to call him anything but Mr Montgomery; he, in turn, called me Ms Kennick, with his unerring sense of propriety. In fact, he only actually began to call me Ms Kennick when my divorce papers – fast-tracked through the Irish courts at a speed that reeked of back-handers and vampire interference – came through. Before that he referred to me as Mrs Dempsey, my married name, even though I had begged and pleaded with him not to. Not even a tongue-lashing from his king could stop him:  
"It is the correct form of address," he insisted, unwavering. While everyone else at the centre called me _Ma'am_ , with a respectful little bow, Mr Montgomery explained in his beautiful voice that as long as no ceremony of symbiosis or marriage had taken place, I was a commoner and it was incumbent on him to address me – with all due respect – in the correct manner.  
"Fine by me," I said. I wasn't very fond of all of the pomp and circumstances anyway.  
"And when we are married," Eric said, "what will you call her then?"  
"Then she will be the Queen Consort," he said. "And I shall call her Queen Eric, as is correct."  
This had made Eric laugh, his great, big unexpected laugh which I couldn't appreciate because I was so outraged.  
"Queen _Eric_?" I spluttered.  
"I'm sorry, Ms Kennick," he said, wringing his manicured fingers, "but you are not vampire, you are not royalty. This will be a morganatic marriage at best, so you must take your husband's title. It is very rare that a reigning monarch marry a human, most keep their humans as lovers but marry strategically among their own."

Oh, yes. The king of New York was, in theory, married to the Queen of Vermont and Maine but kept a string of human lovers and feeders while his wife sat firmly on her own throne many miles away. It was a strategic alliance, a little block of combined power in the country's north-easterly corner.  
"Well, good job we're not – " I started and stopped when I felt Eric's blood thump-thump in mine, a signal that he was startled, telling me to stop. I slid into sulky silence and waited till Montgomery was gone, vacating our apartment by walking out backwards (you can't turn your back on the sovereign, did you know that?) to assure Eric that I was never, never ever going to be the Queen Consort, Queen Eric of Louisiana. The prospect of becoming Queen Magdalena had been bad enough, the realisation that I would actually only be entitled to Queen Eric was worse.  
"Would you rather I married among my own kind and kept you as my mistress?" he'd asked, genuinely curious.  
"NO!" I shouted.  
"Then what is the problem?" he said, turning to me.  
"Eric," I said with exasperated patience, "I said I'd stay for one year. One year. We're not getting married and even if we were, there's no way in hell I'd want to be Queen Eric of Louisiana. Come _on_."  
He looked at me through slitted eyes, weighing up his options. I stayed still, waiting.  
"We'll see," he said and I sighed inwardly.

Battling Eric took a lot more energy than I could usually summon; I preferred to simply stare him down. The first time we'd fought after he'd taken the throne, he'd picked me up and dumped me in our closet, telling me he'd deal with me later. Before he'd reached the throne-room, the local police were at the front desk to investigate reports of a human woman being kept captive in the king's apartments – stupid vampire hadn't thought to confiscate my phone. Of course, the police officers were promptly glamoured and sent on their way, but it was enough to send Eric storming back into our apartment to let me out. I sprayed him with silver nitrate when he opened the door and that was the last time he had used his physical strength in an argument with me. Nowadays he just relied on grinding his teeth and making, as Pamela insightfully pointed out, bulgy eyes.

"Ms Kennick?" Montgomery said, stirring me from my thoughts.  
I nodded.  
"They are waiting," he said and threw open the door.

"His highness, King Eric's consort, Ms Magdalena Maria Kennick," Mr Montgomery announced to the waiting members of the Chamber of Commerce. Confused, some of them stood out of respect, others sat stubbornly, to show me they didn't think much of my pseudo-title and non-status. I approached Jim Pullman, the council head, a man I liked and respected. We'd been working on ways to cement vampire-human business opportunities, to help rebuild New Orleans' status as an international tourist destination.  
"I am so sorry King Eric could not make it," he said with fake regret.  
"He has so much to do upon awakening," I lied.  
We smiled at each other; the charade was intact.

My consort was currently stretched out on our couch, catching up on the latest episode of _The Walking Dead_ , something he failed to see the irony in, given that he himself was the walking dead. He fed when he woke, tried to persuade me (often successfully) to have sex, then I went downstairs and continued to conduct the human aspect of our business till he descended at ten p.m. In the initial weeks of our reign, I had poked him out of our light-tight bedroom at sundown and had made him attend all the meetings with the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce and the Louisiana Tourism Council and the City of Louisiana Education Department and the southern branch of the Vampire-Human Initiative, till I realised that these meetings were being scheduled earlier and earlier on purpose, to avoid Eric being there. Mr Montgomery, in his discreet fashion, revealed that many people found it easier to deal with me and have me intercede with Eric on their behalf.  
"You know best how to handle him," he said in his mellifluous voice. "His Majesty and Ms de Beaufort are too ... vampire for most humans' tastes."  
I'd grinned broadly, not bothering to be discreet. Too vampire? That was one way of putting it.

Eric arrived for the end of the meeting, causing a flutter of flustered unrest among the humans. Many had not stood for me, but they all stood for him when he threw open the doors and strode inside, followed by two or three retainers.  
"Ladies," he snapped. "Gentlemen."  
He caught my eye.  
"My lady," he said and nodded his head.  
He had a flair for the dramatic, that man. I moved slightly to let him sit beside me and showed him my notes. Eric might have claimed to be uninterested in these many meetings but he was always well informed and sharp as a tack. It only took him a few moments to figure out what was going on: he allowed Jim Pullman to present the marketing campaign plans for New Orleans for the coming year, the one targeted at the growing number of vampire tourists, made some minor changes and stood up to show the meeting was over.

He left the room, my hand in his. I tugged him to slow him down so I could say my goodbyes, but he was already on his way to his next meeting and I was firmly in tow. Mr Montgomery scurried behind us, trying to get Eric to take a piece of paper that listed the supplicants that would present themselves at his throne that night.  
"Not now," he said imperiously.  
"Eric," I said, tugging his sleeve, "I need a minute. Eric," I said and pinched his wrist. "I need a minute."  
His eyes widened in confusion, then he remembered my human need to use a bathroom and let me go.  
"See you inside," he said and bent to kiss me with rather more enthusiasm than necessary, just to make Mr Montgomery squirm.  
"Sorry," I whispered to the tall vampire, as Eric swept into the ballroom. I could hear vampires murmur, "Majesty," in deferential tones.  
"Not to worry, Ms Kennick," Montgomery said. "Everything is as it should."

When I returned, I saw a long line of vampires waiting in the hall for their audience with the king. As I reached the back of the queue, a door opened behind me and a blond human came in. He took off his baseball cap and, to the confusion of the last vampire standing in the queue, gave her a little bow.  
"Ma'am," he said.  
She frowned at him and looked away. He caught my eye and the relief that crossed his face was palpable. He gave me a broad grin, an easy smile, and winked.  
"Hey, darlin'" he drawled. "You work here, baby?"  
"I do, sweetheart," I responded in kind.  
"That's a pretty accent you got right there. Where you from?" he asked and leaned a shoulder against the wall so he could look down into my eyes. There was a collective silent gasp from the vampires who knew who I was.  
"Ireland," I said.  
"Iowa?" he answered.  
" _Ireland_ ," I enunciated.  
"That up north somewhere?" he asked.  
"Really north," I replied. "Go up to Newfoundland, turn right and keep going across the Atlantic."  
He looked at me in confusion, then it dawned on him what I meant. "Oh, Ireland," he said. "Like ... the green place."  
"The very one," I confirmed.  
"Say, hun," he continued, undaunted, "Am I in the right place to see King ... King ..."  
"Eric?"  
"Yeah, that's the one. Big guy, blond, always looks kinda, you know, grumpy. You work for him?"  
"In a manner of speaking," I smiled. "Just take a seat somewhere here and your name will be called if you're on his list."  
The blond man laid a finger on my forearm and moved it a fraction; a tiny caress.  
"See, hun, that's the problem right there. He don't know I'm comin'. This is private business, if you know what I mean. Family business. So how can I go about gettin' on that list?"

My curiosity was piqued.  
"What's your name?" I asked as the door of the throneroom was thrown open. Mr Montgomery stood on its threshold, ushering vampires out.  
"Madame," he said when he saw me. I was late. Chop, chop. When he saw the human with his fingers on my arm, he frowned crossly and said, " _Madame_ ," even more sharply.  
"Coming, Mr Montgomery," I said and I hurried forward. The blond man followed me, apologising to the vampires on whose feet he accidentally trod.  
"Miss," he called after me, "eh.. ma'am? Madam?"  
"What's it about?" I asked him, pausing at Montgomery's side.  
"It's my sister," he said, a note of pleading to his voice. "She couldn't come herself 'cause she's, like, nine months pregnant. But she says she got some vampires after her. She says she's in trouble, she needs Eric's help. I mean, King Eric's help. She says it's life and death."  
A cold finger drew a line from the nape of my neck down my spine.  
"What's your name?" I asked again.  
"It's Jason..." he began.  
"Stackhouse," Eric finished, appearing in the doorway. He towered above the blond man, who grinned at him apologetically.  
"Hey, Eric," he said. "I was just telling your assistant here ..."  
"She's my wife," Eric said coldly.  
Jason Stackhouse looked at me, astonished. "Oh, hey, I mean – I see. Yeah. Congratulations, I guess I musta missed the part about you gettin' married, Eric. King Eric. Nice to meet you, Mrs.. eh... Mrs King."  
"Come in," he said stiffly and clicked his fingers to indicate the other vampires should leave. To Mr Montgomery's chagrin, he closed the door in his face, leaving the three of us alone in the throne-room.  
"Tell me all, Stackhouse," he said and grabbed my hand, leading us to the dais with our chairs. As Jason made appreciative noises, whistling at the big windows and fancy drapes, Eric squeezed my hand, bending his head to say,  
"For what is about to come at us, I apologise, Magdalena."  
Startled I said, "What is coming at us?"  
"I don't know," he said. "But it involves Sookie Stackhouse so it will not be good."


	2. Chapter 2

Eric shut the double doors behind us and started to stride towards the dais where the thrones stood. I muttered his name under my breath and indicated that we sit down on the chairs in front of the raised platform. Eric raised an eyebrow but I just plumped down on the nearest chair and patted the one next to me to show that Jason should sit. Looking a bit over-awed by the size of the room and its imposing windows, he sat down beside me with alacrity, shooting me a grateful grin. Eric sat opposite us, not bothering to conceal a sigh.  
"So, Stackhouse," he said by way of greeting. "What does Sookie want?"  
"Well," Jason began and then stopped. "See, I gotta get this straight: do I have to call you, like, _Your Majesty_ or some of that shit?"  
"Yes," Eric said at the same time I firmly answered, "No!"  
"Ignore him," I said. "Call him Eric."  
Eric looked away, trying not to smile. I kicked his shin.  
"Ok, Sookie says some vampire is hanging around outside her house. She says he's scoping the place, trying to get her."  
"He?" Eric inquired.  
"That's the thing, she doesn't know. She's never actually seen him or her."  
"Oh- _kay_ ," Eric said slowly. "So how does she know that he's there?"  
"She senses it," replied Jason. " ' Least, that's what she says."

Eric leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, his fingers folded over his stomach. He studied Jason.  
"Have you reported it to the sheriff of Area 5? She knows to keep an eye out for all matters regarding Ms Stackhouse."  
I glanced at Eric. Really? That was news to me. But he continued to stare at Jason.  
"Yeah, she done come by one night with a coupla other vampires and they looked around. She even sent over a fella from the Shreveport pack, a guy called Knight."  
"TJ?" I asked eagerly. My old werefriend.  
"No, something like Trey, I think?" Jason said, frowning, as he tried to remember.  
"Troy," I corrected. "His father."  
"Yeah, well, he sniffed around and he could find nothing. But she still insists. And you know Sookie: when she's got a bee in her bonnet, she's kinda hard to stop ..."  
His voice petered off but Eric continued to stare at him, as though he were trying to figure something out.

Jason and I wriggled on our seats for a minute or two, waiting for Eric to speak. Finally, he did:  
"So Sookie claims she's being stalked by some unknown vampire, that no one has seen, heard, sensed or smelled. And because no one would believe her in Bon Temps, she sent you down here to get me to ... deal with it? Fix it?"  
Jason shifted in his chair. "Yeah, something like that, I guess."  
"And what does she expect me to do?" Eric asked, making an elaborate shrugging gesture, the palms of his hands upwards, as though he were beseeching the heavens for help.  
"I dunno, man," Jason said. He leaned forward into our little circle and, instinctively, so did I. Even Eric inclined his head to listen.  
"See, she's eight months pregnant, nearly nine," Sookie's brother said.  
Aha! I knew it – I had smelled it the last time we had met, but she'd probably been in the very early stages back then and I hadn't said anything.  
"And, you know," continued Jason, "I think she's just a bit cray-cray."  
Eric looked at him blankly, so Jason made a twirling motion beside his temple. "Crazy, man. She bin so hormonal this whole pregnancy." He whistled. "I mean, Sookie is ... you know ... _Sookie_. But hormonal, pregnant Sookie? Her husband, he's gonna get a medal for this, man. She's off-the-charts crazy."  
Eric nodded and the two men's heads nodded conspiratorially, like those Chinese cats that bring good fortune. I began to feel a bit irked.

"So she's probably just imagining it all?" Eric said, sitting up straight.  
"Yeah, I think so. We all think so. I mean, there's no trace of nothin' outside the house – so, yes, I think she's just imagining things. But she made me promise I'd come and talk to you, so here I am."  
Eric sighed. "Fine," he said. "I'll talk to the sheriff. Tell Sookie I'll have someone from the sheriff's entourage come by and talk to her."  
"Are you not going to even send her a guard? Or have someone stay at the house for a couple of nights?" I asked, trying not to snap.  
"Why?" Eric said. "You heard Jason, it's probably all in her head."  
"Seriously," said Jason, "last weekend, she insisted on painting the whole porch. By herself. Lookin' like this," and he made a motion with his hand to sketch a big pregnant belly. "I think she's just a bit paranoid. Got a bit caught up in the drama."  
"And Sookie does love drama," Eric agreed.

I'd had enough. I stood up.  
"You two disgust me," I said. "You pair of misogynists. Poor dumb, hormonal Sookie. Crazy little lady, seeing vampires hiding in the bushes. No wonder she's so distressed, with no one taking her seriously. Would it kill you to call her up and ask her what's going on?" I said, turning to Eric.  
He rolled his eyes and sighed.  
"Very well, my love," he answered in a martyred tone.  
He rarely called me his love, only when I was asking him to do stuff he patently did not want to do, like writing thank-you notes or letting tourists take his picture. I think he called me his love to remind him that he actually was fond of me, even at times when he probably would've most liked to pick me up and lock me in the nearest closet again.  
"Fine," I said. "Grand. Don't bother. Are you going back to Bon Temps tomorrow?" I asked Jason.  
"Yes, but – "  
"I'll go with you then and talk to Sookie myself," I said. "I'll get a flight home on Friday," I added for Eric's benefit.  
I could feel his annoyance bubble up inside me so I stared at him and snapped my ire back at him. What we had could not be described as telepathy; through our exchange of blood, I had developed a heightened awareness of how he felt, an underlying sensation that was most perceptible when emotions ran high. My blood carried the taste of the things I ate, however it also worked as a kind of emotional conductor, so Eric was also aware of much of how I felt. There were occasions when it worked to my advantage and now was one of them: I couldn't say what I wanted to say in Jason's presence, so I glared at him and felt my own blood spurt angrily through my veins, pounding in my ears, knowing that it would register with him far more clearly than anything I could say.

"I will send Pam with you," he said.  
"We're leaving in the morning," I replied. "She's not a morning person, so to say."  
Jason opened his mouth to say something but shut it again.  
"I'm not sure I can allow this," said Eric.  
"I'm not sure I care," I replied smartly. "I'm going anyway."  
"You are a public figure now," Eric said. "And, as my consort, you have a lot of ... value."  
I felt a warning thrum-thrum in my head, Eric's way of reminding me that there were a lot of people who would appreciate the leverage I might provide, were they inclined to, say, borrow me for their own nefarious purposes.  
"Take Pam," he said. "She knows the sheriff, she knows Sookie, she knows Bon Temps – a little bit, at least. Take her. Please."  
It was the _please_ that did it. Eric was far more comfortable commanding than pleading, so I conceded.

"That okay by you?" I asked Jason. "We can leave straight away, we'll be in Shreveport by sunrise."  
"I... uh... I..." He looked from one of us to the other. "Yeah, sure, I guess."  
He seemed reluctant and I guessed he'd probably been planning to couple Eric's visit with a trip to the casino on the ground floor. Maybe a few drinks in the popular vampire bar in the basement of the luxury complex. Instead, he'd have to spend four hours in a car listening to Pamela bitching about a return to northern Louisiana, a place she'd vowed to avoid like the plague. I didn't blame him for being reluctant, in fairness.

Eric stood up and so did we. He put an arm around my waist and drew me in.  
"Be careful," he whispered into my ear. "Nothing is ever simple with Sookie. Nothing is ever straightforward. Be on your guard."  
He released me with a kiss to the top of my head, which barely reached his collar bone. I squeezed his hand and led Jason out, down the long corridor past Mr Montgomery and the other waiting vampires, who'd stood to attention and shuffled into line when Eric had thrown the doors open. Jason followed me out into the foyer and I showed him where he could wait while I went upstairs to pack a bag and inform Pam of her luck.  
"Pam scares me," he said as I turned to leave. "She's one scary motherfucking vampire, 'scuse my French."  
"She is," I agreed.  
"And she won't be pleased about this, will she?" he asked worriedly. I patted his shoulder and smiled.  
"She's going to hate us," I said. "She'll be _spitting_ with rage."  
"Oh, man," Jason said despondently and he sank into one of the velvet armchairs that were arranged in small groups around the large lobby. I took one look at his face, the picture of misery, before I turned to hide my grin and take the steps of the wide carpeted stairs two at a time, up to our quarters.


	3. Chapter 3

Pam's shriek could be heard all the way down the grand staircase and in the lobby. This I know for a fact because when I descended the stairs in as ladylike and stately a manner as I could manage, I found Jason, several dozen tourists and many of the vampire staff gathered at the bottom, their faces petrified.  
"All is well!" I called regally – sometimes this new role of mine lent me airs and graces. A crowd of open-mouthed onlookers clustered around the bottom of the steps was one such occasion. Like a tableau coming to life, they started to chatter again in hushed voices and moved away from the stairs, glancing upwards to see what would next come down.  
"So I take it she wasn't happy?" Jason asked worriedly, clutching my arm.  
"She was _livid_ ," I whispered happily.

Livid, if anything, wasn't enough to describe the violence of Pam's feelings. I had interrupted her mid-feed to inform her that Eric was sending her back to Shreveport and we were leaving, like, now. I could've broken the news with more tact and less glee, but I had been the butt of Pamela's teasing for more than half a year so I relished the opportunity to get her back. She'd stared at me, her eyes bulging enough to rival Eric's and let out a single, blood-curdling shriek that had caused me and her current girlfriend, Layla, to cover our hands with our ears.  
"He's in session," I had called after her as she flew to the door, intent on seeing her maker. "There's no argument, Pam, you're coming with."  
"Never," she hissed. She was barefoot, but still towered over me. "Never, ever will I return to that pox-ridden, inbred-infested, hillybilly shit-heap. Never!"  
"It's just for one night, Pam," I said calmly and nodded at the door, indicating that Layla should leave. And she did, very quickly.  
"Never," she hissed again, fangs fully extended.  
"No argument, Pam," I repeated and suppressed a smile. This felt so good. She didn't even know who we were going to visit; when she found out, she'd blow a gasket. And as I turned my back on her to leave the room, I allowed myself a wide grin: when she saw who we were going with, she would very possibly implode. I couldn't wait.

So she sent me down the stairs while she packed an overnight bag and, very likely, pounded Eric telepathically for being such a conniving bastard. I was sitting beside a blanched Jason Stackhouse in the lobby when she appeared at the top of the stairs, dressing in black as though she was going to a funeral, and dragging a very large suitcase behind her.  
"Is she plannin' on movin' back?" Jason whispered and sank down so she wouldn't see him over the top of the large leather armchairs.  
Pam saw me, sniffed imperiously and crossed the lobby, pulling her case behind her. She was, as was her wont, wearing very high heels and had a tiny black Chanel bag swinging from her wrist. People naturally cleared a path for her as she crossed the lobby and she didn't deign to acknowledge anyone's existence, much less their presence. She spotted me and I waved her over, and as she came closer, her nose wrinkled as she caught a familiar scent. Jason Stackhouse's blond head peeped above the back of the chair, as though he were peeking over the top of a parapet, and she froze, unblinking. Now, I can't be entirely sure, but I may have seen tears in her eyes: her lower lip trembled and her hands reflexed into fists, causing her little Chanel purse to jangle around her wrist like an oversized bangle. She remained still for a second, then literally spun around on her stiletto heel and, abandoning her wheelie case where it stood, stalked off across the lobby towards the large wooden doors that led to the ballroom where Eric was holding court.

"Come on!" I said to Jason and followed her at a trot, my short legs working hard to keep up with her long ones.  
"Ma'am," said the guards to her as she passed. "Ma'am, Majesty," they murmured at me – as usual not really sure what to call me. Jason doffed an invisible cap and scurried behind me, past the line of vampires still waiting and past an affronted Mr Montgomery and through the open doors of the ballroom. Pam was standing in front of the dais, Eric was still sitting on his throne, his forehead resting in the palm of his hand. Neither said a word but I could tell by the way my blood was dancing, like an electric pulse running through my veins, that they were having one of their silent fights. Eric nodded at me and said something to her in a low voice and a brittle smile broke across her face.  
"Very well, my liege lord," she announced finally and curtseyed, no mean feat in those heels. It was a curtsey that belied her true feelings, a curtsey so flamboyant that it bordered on disrespect. Eric gestured for me to come forward.  
"One night," he said to us both. "You have tomorrow night to deal with this issue and I want you on your way home by morning."  
Pamela curtseyed again, but I stood straight. I would never bow to Eric and he knew it. A smile broke across his face and he nodded in return. We left the room silently, to the staccato of Pam's heels and the squeak of Jason's sneakers.  
"Farewell, Ms Kennick," Mr Montgomery intoned as we passed. "Return quickly and safely to us, if you please."

xxx

Pamela drove to Shreveport in her car. I elected to ride with Jason as I knew Pamela would use the opportunity to test the limits of my mortality by driving recklessly enough to make me wish for death. Passive aggression was her forte. Driving with Jason, on the other hand, was entirely pleasant. He sang along to country and western songs on the radio and told me a lot of stories about a lot of people I did not know. Unlike Sookie, he was open and unguarded, the kind of person you could say anything to, the kind of person who would tell you anything you asked. So I asked. A lot.  
"Who's the sheriff of Area 5?" I asked. She'd only been appointed recently; Eric had kept his own sheriffdom for the first few months of his reign, hoping to maintain order in the region furthest from his throne. His successor had come to New Orleans to be appointed, but I had been away at a vampire/human convention in Texas that particular weekend, happy not to have to sit through another vampire ceremony. I'd heard the sheriff's name but never met her. I presumed she was just another bootlicker that Eric had promoted to keep the peace; I didn't know that keeping an eye on Sookie Stackhouse was part of her sheriffing detail.

"Eh, she's, uh, she's a vampire from ... eh, hereabouts," Jason said, suddenly awkward. "Jessica Hamby's her name, though she goes by Jessica Fortenberry now, seein' as how she's married and all. Eric's never told you 'bout Jess?" he said, his forehead creased in a frown.  
Jess? Hmm. Everyone on nickname basis now? More and more interesting.  
"No," I said. "Eric's never mentioned her, actually."  
I sat up straight in my seat and wriggled around so I could see him better.  
"Yeah, well, she's cool. A real cool vampire, one of the best," Jason said.  
"Did she work for Eric?" I ask. "I don't think I met her when I was in Shreveport."  
"See, I don't know what I should be telling you," Jason said. "What with you being Eric Northman's wife and all. I mean – I just mean, if he hasn't told you – "  
"Come on, Jason," I coaxed. "For a start, I'm not really his wife, he just says that to annoy me. And seriously? I'm not going to tell on you to Eric, for crying out loud."  
I nudged him gently with my fingertips. "Who is she, this wonderful sheriff?"  
"She's Bill Compton's progeny," he said. "There were lots of vamps interested in the position, lots of older vamps with more experience, but Eric chose her. It hasn't gone down too well, but she's doin' a good job."  
There was a note of pride in his voice and it made me wonder how he knew this Jessica vampire.  
"So he appointed her because she's Bill Compton's progeny? Wasn't Bill Compton...?" my voice tailed off.  
"Yup," Jason said shortly.  
"And didn't he...?"  
"Yup," he said again.  
"But wasn't he...?"  
"I don't actually know what the questions you are asking me are," Jason said, cutting me off, "but I'm guessing that anything you have heard is true. So just take it all as a big yes."  
I sat back in my seat to process that information. "Making her sheriff was a bit of a statement then," I ventured.  
"You could say that," Jason said in his easy way. He shot me one of his charming smiles and pointed at the road up ahead. Pam's car was indicating for the turn off.  
"She's heading for Shreveport. You wanna follow her or come back to Bon Temps to Sookie and me?"  
I sighed. "We're booked into the Aurora Inn," I said. It was Shreveport's only vampire hotel and it only had a measly four-star rating, which Pamela had accepted with a martyred sigh. "We have to stick together."  
Jason looked me up and down, nodding. "She your bodyguard?" he asked.  
I snorted. "Yeah, right. Mine is a body she'd love to stake," I said, "but she has been put in charge of my safekeeping and luckily for me, her loyalty to Eric is slightly stronger than her urge to drain me."  
"Aww," said Jason. "He must like you then. Never thought I'd see Eric this way again."

 _Again_. The word hung in the air between us and neither of us could bat it away. Jason cleared his throat and hit the indicator, pretending to study the dark road for oncoming traffic before he followed Pam. With the kind of conversational charm I had become used to in southerners, he tactfully turned the conversation to whether or not I was familiar with Shreveport's tourist sites, not allowing me to go back and pick up the 'again', to have him tell me exactly what that meant. I took the hint and answered lightly, brightly, till we pulled up in front of the hotel. He said goodbye by kissing me on the cheek, winking at the female vampire at the reception desk even as he did so.  
"Jason Stackhouse," Pamela said, appearing at my side. "He is one piece of work. You know how his fairy blood manifests itself? He has had every piece of tail north of Alexandria."  
She hooked her arm into mine and whirled me around.  
"Man-whore," she said.  
"Jealous, Pam?" I teased.  
She sniffed haughtily and pulled me inside.


	4. Chapter 4

"No Eric," Sookie said upon opening the door.  
She'd known he wasn't coming so it was hardly a surprise. It might have been a statement, a greeting, an utterance of resignation. Whatever it was, I didn't get a hello, just the acknowledgement of the fact that I wasn't a very tall, blond Viking vampire, but rather a short, red-headed, freckly Irishwoman.  
"I look like shit," she said. "Before you think it."  
"You look tired," I said kindly and Jason shot me a smile to show me I'd given the right answer.  
The last time I'd seen Sookie, she'd had a healthy tan, even though it had been the middle of December, she'd been slim and carefully dressed, with a spring in her toes like a person who cannot sit still for an instant. Now she was heavily pregnant and her tan had faded to a sallow yellow. There were dark rings under her eyes and her blond hair was limp, dark at the roots. She looked like someone or something was slowly sucking the life out of her.  
"This one," she said, turning around and walking down the hall. I followed her, looking at the walls of the snug little house that were covered in photos and framed newspaper cuttings.  
"Sorry?" I asked, distracted.  
"This one inside is sucking the life out of me. She has my curse," she said, slumping down at the kitchen table.  
"Oh, Sook," Jason admonished. "Don't say that. You don't know for sure. And it's not a curse, besides."  
"She'll be like me," Sookie said sadly.  
"Do you know for sure that it's a girl?" I asked eagerly. "When are you due?"  
"Three weeks," she answered. "And I'm pretty sure it's a girl, I just have a feeling and I'm pretty sure I'm right. Anyway," she said changing the topic with a hint of her old pertness, "Jason told me Pam came with you. Where did you dump her?"  
"At that vampire hotel in Shreveport," I said. "We'll come over tonight, after we've been to see the sheriff."  
"Fine," Sookie said and added in sugared tones, "Can I possibly offer you an iced tea?"  
I was momentarily started by personality change but then the back door opened and a man walked in. He was quite tall, with dark hair that needed a lot of attention not to be unruly, his skin was brown from being outdoors and he had the most extraordinary blue eyes, the same blue eyes I had seen in his daughter Adele.

"Home already, honey?" she sang and threw her arms around his neck. "Maggie, this is my husband, Luke. Luke, this is an old friend from New Orleans, Maggie Kennick. I invited her to stay over tonight, I hope you don't mind. We have so much to catch up on - girl talk and all of that," she batted her eyelashes at him, a gesture that seemed oddly girlish in contrast to her heavily pregnant state.  
"We can go out for a drink!" Jason cried. "We ain't hit the bars in a long time, man. Maybe I can get Hoyt to join us."  
Luke shrugged. "Sure, yeah, why not? You passing through, Maggie?"  
I caught Sookie's eye and she glared at me for an instant and I lied, "Yes, I'm visiting some friends in Shreveport for a couple of days with my..."  
Sookie shook her head rapidly and I decided not to mention my vampire pal, Pam.  
"... with my, eh, intention of seeing as many of them as possible!" I finished with a kind of manic enthusiasm and beamed at Sookie's husband, who was looking at me a little quizzically.  
"You're not from New Orleans?" Luke asked, fixing me with his cobalt blue eyes.  
"I'm from Ireland," I answered.  
"Iowa?" he said. "Really?"  
I sighed. I really had to learn to enunciate more clearly.

xxx

Pam rapped smartly on the door of the sheriff's house. It was a large residence next to an old cemetery and it was brightly lit from the inside. As we waited for someone to answer the door, I could hear the sound of a television and high-pitched laughter. The man who flung the door open was tall, taller than Pam, and dressed in a faded t-shirt and sweatpants. He drew a breath when he saw Pam and said, "Hey," in greeting.  
"Hey, Hoyt," she answered. "Jessica in? Official business, sent here by his majesty, King Eric of Louisiana."  
She could rarely pronounce Eric's official title without making it sound comical, and this was one such occasion.  
"Please come – " Hoyt began but she was in the door before he got to the preposition.  
"Hello, nice to meet you, I'm Maggie," I said as I followed her. He nodded and closed the door, pointed in the direction of a door, from which we heard the sound of the TV, tuned to an episode of Dancing With the Stars.

The sheriff stood up when we entered. She had startling red hair and her skin, which had been pale as a human, was almost translucent as a vampire. Her eyes were slightly slanted, like a cat's, and when she smiled, her earnest face became quite sweet. She'd been young when she'd been turned and probably local, as she spoke with the kind of accent I'd gotten used to in my time in Shreveport.  
"Hey, Pam," she said. "What's up? Who's this?"  
She pressed the volume button on the remote control, shooting a regretful glance at the TV screen where a couple of spangle-clad dancers were gyrating to an old Ricky Martin song.  
"This is Eric's human, Maggie Kennick," Pam said dismissively.  
"So you're the human Queen?" Jessica asked in an eager tone. "They told us about you when we went to New Orleans."  
This was beginning to wear me out.  
"No," I said. "I'm really not. I'm kind of like a very badly paid personal assistant."  
"She really is," Pam agreed. "And she's shit at it. Anyway, love what you've done to the house, marriage suits you, congratulations on your sheriffdom, blah, blah, blah. Now, down to business: Sookie Stackhouse. What the fuck is going on?"

Reluctantly, Jessica dragged her gaze from me and focussed on Pam. "Yes, well, Sookie says someone or something is stalking her. Or haunting her. She can't make up her mind. She says windows are rattling at night, she's hearing voices, she says she thought she saw a figure outside... but no one else has heard anything, seen anything. I went over there myself and spent the night outside – nothing. We had weres track the woods around the house; nothing."  
"So she's just fucking loo-lah," Pam summarised.  
"Well," Jessica said earnestly, "there is such a thing as pregnancy-induced psychosis. I looked it up on the internet and then spoke to a friend of mine who – "  
"This is Sookie Stackhouse," the other vampire interrupted coldly. "Sookie, whom we all know and love. She's addicted to drama. Clearly her little blond head is in overdrive, trying to come up with something to alleviate her boredom, trying to get Eric to snap at her heels again. Sorry," she added, shooting a look at me.  
I wasn't sure what she was sorry for so I shrugged. Pam gave another one of her theatrical sighs.  
"Nothing for it, I suppose," she said. "We had better get over there and do our duty. Maggie gets to spend a night chit-chatting with the psychotic fairy; I get to spend the night filing my nails on her porch, waiting for a ghost to come rapping on her windows. Come on," she said and I gave Jessica and Hoyt a little wave.  
"Thank you," I said.  
"Good bye, your majesty," Jessica said with a cheeky grin. "Do come again, y'all."  
Pam wriggled her fingers in approximation of a wave. We slammed the doors of her hired car and drove off down the avenue.

To my surprise, Sookie's house was practically next door to the Sheriff's, separated only by the cemetery. I walked up the wooden steps and stood on her porch with Pam looming behind me as I tried to knock the net thing that covered the door.  
"That's a screen," Pam said with a sigh and whipped it open, rapping smartly on the wood of the front door. I wanted to point out that I didn't come from a place with screen doors, but figured it was pointless, so I looked around instead. Sookie's house was like something from a 1940s film: it had a long porch out front with a swing seat and a rocking chair, the windows had old wooden frames and probably rattled on stormy nights. The little yellow house was set into a clearing surrounded by woods, which was idyllically peaceful by day, but seemed a little shadowy and threatening by night.

She opened the door.  
"Please come in, Pam," she said and Pamela flew over the threshold.  
"My, aren't you extra tasty?" she said, smiling fangfully.  
" _Pamela_ ," I said warningly and smacked her arm. "Don't mind her, Sookie."  
"I don't pay her any attention at all. Pam and I go way back," she said. "Don't we, Pam?"  
"Way back," Pam agreed. "I'm going to let you girls get all caught up while I have a look around outside and see if I can find any trace of anything. Then I'll make myself comfortable on your porch."  
"Back porch," Sookie said. "My husband doesn't know you're here and I'd appreciate it if it stayed that way. He ..." She paused and swallowed. "He worries about me."

Pam slipped outside and Sookie offered me another iced tea. I declined and asked her if I could have a hot tea instead. She looked at me weirdly then took a bottle of iced tea out of the fridge, filled a cup and put it in the microwave. I bit my lip to stop myself laughing – I'd been hoping for a cup of real tea, preferably with milk, but this was as close as I was going to get to it. We sat opposite each other, tea in hand, smiling awkwardly. I had never managed to get a handle on Sookie or Sookie's feelings towards me. She always had the upper hand, of course, as she could read my mind and I had to rely on interpreting her behaviour towards me, which was generally reserved and wary.  
"How's Eric?" she asked abruptly.  
"Same old," I answered. "He's settling into the job."  
We smiled at each other and sipped our tea.  
"Jason said you guys are married," Sookie said, not meeting my eye. "So it's official, then. Like, official official, not just the blood-bond thing?"  
"Eh, no. We're not."  
"Would you like to?" she asked carefully, pretending to focus on bringing her glass to her lips, not looking me in the eye. I tried to think about an answer and as I did, I saw Sookie's eyes flicker, reading my thoughts. Aware that I couldn't hide anything from her, I said:  
"Well, it's not marriage, _per se_. It's called a ceremony of symbiosis and it sets out the rules governing things like, oh, my rights to an income and inheritance and his rights to my blood and any offspring I might have, if I decided I wanted to have someone impregnate me."  
Sookie pulled a face.  
"Yeah. It's very technical and legal and not a bit romantic. A contractual agreement with some Latin gobbled-gook and Eric in a robe and me in a big dress. It would make my life safer. Easier. The vampires down in New Orleans don't know what to make of me, I'm like Eric's pet or something. Being officially tied to him would get me more respect, for sure. Then we'd register as married over here so I'd have some of the same legal rights in the eyes of the American law – and I'd get a proper green card to stay here."  
"But – ?" Sookie supplied.  
"But ..." I tried to answer and put into words the thoughts that were flying around. Being committed – shackled? – to Eric would signal the end of the plans I had made for my life's path. It would mean giving up a lot of the dreams I had had for myself. And as strongly as I felt about him, I never knew if he felt the same, or whether I was just another human woman he would kindly love, watch age and bury in a plot in a New Orleans cemetery, putting my wedding ring with the other fourteen he kept as mementos of his human wives. When I glanced over at Sookie, I saw that she was deeply entrenched in my head. She nodded and reached out to squeeze my hand, a gesture warmer than any Sookie had ever extended to me before.  
"I understand," she said. "More than you can imagine, I understand."

And that seemed to finally break the ice between us. We started to exchange stories of some of Eric's foibles: his neatness tic (he did most of the cleaning in our little flat), his bizarre love of Barry Manilow's greatest hits (the Copacabana might be the hottest spot north of Havana but I personally wanted to torch the place), his dislike of decorative buttons (he kept demanding to know what the 'point' of the buttons on our sofa cushions was and when I told them they were just there to look pretty, he stared at me, bulgy-eyed, as though I had sewn turds onto the cushions instead.) We were laughing when a car drew up outside and Jason came in, supporting her drunk husband, who laughed along with us even though he had no idea what was going on.

"I'm getting this one to bed," Sookie said, trying to escape his drunken embraces. "Maggie, you're in the room at the top of the stairs, overlooking the back of the house. The bathroom is right next door."  
I said goodnight to Luke and Jason, gave Sookie a quick hug, which she returned warmly, and went upstairs. The room was under a sloping ceiling and the metal-framed bed was soft, sagging slightly in the middle, and covered in a faded patchwork quilt. My sleep rhythm had been turned upside-down since I'd started working for vampires that I usually didn't get to sleep before four or five a.m. I looked at the alarm clock beside the little bed and saw it was just after midnight. I got changed and lay under the blanket, listening to the sounds of Sookie and Luke coming up the stairs, she scolding light-heartedly while he declared his love over and over, the alcohol making him slur his words. I grinned and decided to read a book on my phone for a while - but even as I was thinking it, my eyes grew heavy, so I decided to close them for five minutes. Just five minutes. I wanted to wait till Luke was asleep, then go down to Pam, so I just closed my eyes for a little bit. A tiny bit.

And fell fast asleep, only waking when Sookie shook me hard.  
"Do you hear that?" she said pointing at the window. The panes were rattling in their frames, rapidly, as though they were being beaten by the wind.  
"Is there a storm?" I asked, confused.  
"Good," she said, dragging me out of the bed, "so you can hear it, too."  
"Of course," I said. "but it's just the wind, Sookie."  
" _There is no wind_ ," she hissed.  
I walked over to the window, flicked the latch and threw the window up. To my surprise, she was right. The window continued to rattle in its frame but outside the night was still, quiet, no insects or birds to be heard.  
 _Weird_ , I thought and even as my sleepy brain was formulating this notion, I felt something grip my neck like a vice. I gasped as the invisible hand shook me once, twice, then flung me back inside the room. I skittered across the floorboards on my back, coming to a halt at Sookie's feet.  
Wide-eyed, she stared at me then, in chorus, we both yelled, " _Pam!_ "


	5. Chapter 5

Pam whizzed into the room, pushing us roughly aside.  
"What is it?" she cried.  
Sookie pointed at the open window and Pam raced over and stuck her head outside.  
" _What_?" she asked again, irritated.  
Sookie and I were clutching each other, her nails digging into my upper arms. I gently declawed myself and she apologised, distracted.  
"There was something at the window," I said. "It was rattling and then this thing grabbed me – "  
"It grabbed her neck – " Sookie said. "And it shook her, Pam, like really bad."  
Her husband appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. "What's up, Sook?" He did a double take when he saw Pam.  
"Have we met?" he asked with that impeccable Southern politeness.  
"De Beaufort, Pamela," she rapped out. "Delighted. Now," she said, turning to me, "human or vampire?"  
"I don't know," I said. "I saw nothing. It was like it was invisible."  
"No, there was definitely something there," Sookie insisted. "A face. Like, an old face, with long hands."  
"I didn't see anything," I admitted "but the hands were icy cold."  
"I think it was a vampire," Sookie said.  
"Or maybe a ghost?" I added fearfully.  
I felt a little bit like sobbing; my neck hurt and I could still feel the cold on my skin. Sookie was staring intently at Pam, willing her to believe us, but Luke was staring at me with a weird look on his face. Midway between disbelief and pity. He put an arm around his wife's shoulders and drew her in. I sure could've done with a shoulder to lean on, but Pam was tapping a foot with her eyebrows raised and I could tell I would get no sympathy from that quarter.  
"Fine," she said shortly. "It must've been something I guess. If anything, it sounds like a vampire," and she mouthed, _Ghost, really?_ at me. "Sounds like a rogue vamp got a whiff of Sookie's gourmet blood, probably hasn't got the memo that she's off-limits for the undead plebs. I'll do a tour of the grounds and see if I can find anything," she said to Luke with one of her charming smiles.  
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to question some aspect of what she'd just said, then shut it again quickly. She stalked past us, head held high, and went down the stairs. I scampered behind her.

"Stay inside," she said and pushed me back on to Sookie's rag rug, but I wriggled past her out on to the porch. Beyond us, the garden was pitch dark and shadowy.  
"But I – "  
"Stay inside," she repeated.  
"Pam, if it's a vampire, I can smell him," I insisted. "You know it makes sense, let me go with you."  
She raised a polished fingernail and said, "Queen Magdalena, may I remind you of my obligation to our liege lord? Yes? Well, as far as Eric is concerned, my primary duty is not to protect the little fairy breeder but to keep his little consort safe. My vested interest is not in Sookie's ghost or spectre or vampire or whatever it is you idiots think you saw, my concern is keeping you out of harm's way. So stay the fuck inside."  
"Pam, I can track him," I said, making one last attempt, my hand on the railing.  
"Listen," she hissed, "in this part of the world, there are still plenty of vamps at large with Hep V. You don't know what that's like because you never had to deal with it on your windy shithole island, did you? Well, we did, and they don't give a shit about Eric Northman's jurisdiction, all they care about is their next feed. If one of them has strayed into Louisiana territory, I have to take him down. And trying to keep them off the fairy will be hard enough but adding a carrier to the mix is like throwing a bleeding seal into a shark pool."  
She had a vivid turn of phrase, did Pam.  
"So stay inside," she snarled and, gently but firmly, pushed me back into the house. Then she slammed the door so quickly, I barely had time to jerk my fingers out of the way.

When I turned around, Sookie was standing on the stairs.  
"Good to know where I stand in the order of things," she said in a neutral voice. She smiled her brittle little smile, then turned and went back upstairs. There was nothing I could do or say to make the situation any better, so I stayed by the door, peering through the net curtain, trying to see Pam in the darkness.

Close to dawn, she admitted defeat. She'd tracked through the woods as far as the old Compton house, where the sheriff now lived and returned with the redhead in tow.  
"There are prints," she said, "but there are a lot of prints in the woods – could be Sookie's, her husband's, the weres' that Eric sent..."  
Jessica looked worried. "We had a rogue vampire stray into Bon Temps about two months ago, pretty far gone – "  
"Pretty far gone?" I asked.  
"Hep V. When they get near the end, they get kinda ... rabid, I guess. Like dogs, you know? I got reports from a bunch of weres out near Burton's Cross that he was killing livestock and even venturing out pretty close to dawn. So I had to round up a couple of deputies to go out and take him in. Nasty stuff, Maggie. When they're like that, they've got no common sense, you know? They'll put themselves in any kind of danger, as long as it gets them a feed."  
"So you think this is a rogue, and that's why he's bold enough to attempt to get into the house?" I said. It made sense.  
The two vampires nodded.  
"Can you catch him?" I asked.  
"Sure," Jessica said confidently. "I've got a couple of vampires I can call on who have experience dealing with them. I'll post a couple of sentries here outside the house till we catch him. Sookie will give us a sweater or something with her scent; that should draw him in."  
"That's that, then," Pam said. "I'll arrange for my coffin to be picked up after dawn. You can drive my car back, Maggie, but woe betide you if you so much as scratch it."  
"No, wait," I said, "Shouldn't we stay till he's actually been caught?"  
Pam and Jessica shook their heads. Silly human. No, no.

"We've done it before," Jessica said and she patted my arm. I stopped myself from bristling at her touch. For as long as I could remember, I had known vampires. And for as long as I had known them, I'd been aware of the fact that they believed – with unshakeable conviction – that they were superior to us humans in every way. Even the stupidest vampire considered himself smarter and wiser than the cleverest human; they were stronger than us, older than us, more experienced than us. Unfortunately for vampires, their vanity made them easy to manipulate, blind to their own weaknesses; they might be smart but I was sneakier. And their condescension had long been a bone of contention to me: standing in front of these two smiling vampire women, who were nodding at me in a d _on't-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head_ way, I began to feel majorly pissed off.  
"Fine," I said through gritted teeth. "If you've got it under control."  
Pam nudged me and pointed at the eastern sky. "I've got about half an hour," she said, "Let's split, sweetheart."  
Like all Pam's endearments, this managed to sound like a threat. I shook Jessica's hand and said goodbye.  
"You don't want to leave Sookie a note?" Pam said, pausing by her car.  
"I'll WhatsApp her," I said shortly. "Let's go before you sizzle."  
"Don't make it sound like you're looking forward to it," she said sourly.

When we got to the hotel, the carriers from Anubis were waiting. Pam packed her overnight bag and handed it to me, then stepped elegantly into her coffin.  
"Now, mind my car," she said, as she pulled the lid down. "Not a scratch, do you hear? And no speeding."  
"Good night," I said and pushed the lid shut. Two beefy men from the transport company were waiting. They gently lifted the coffin on to a little trolley and rolled it out of the room. I waited till I heard the elevator door ding, then I picked up my phone and called Sookie.  
"I'm coming back tonight," I said.


	6. Chapter 6

I slept a few hours, got up just at dusk to get something to eat in the restaurant's sub-par human section, trying to ignore the vampires around me who were spooning blood out of bone china soup bowls. As I was getting dressed to return to Sookie's, my phone buzzed. Eric. I knew he was in our light-tight room, looking at the luminous dials of his watch, wondering why I wasn't already back in New Orleans. Because he knew damned well that I hadn't arrived home yet, he wouldn't be able to sense me in the monarch's complex. The phone beeped to let me know he'd left me a voicemail, then beeped again with a message: _Magdalena: where are you?_

He was calling me Magdalena. He was peeved. I grinned, imagining his large fingers pounding the tiny keyboard of his phone, cursing me and it in Norse. And any minute now, Anubis was going to deposit Pam at his door and when they found out that I hadn't obediently followed in Pam's fancy car, their combined rage would reach me all the way across the state of Louisiana. My phone was likely to explode.

But I put the vampires aside and drove out to Sookie's. She was sitting on the porch with Adele and Jason. While Sookie's welcome was lukewarm at best, her brother and daughter looked delighted to see me again. She fetched some iced tea (I sipped it as enthusiastically as I could) and Luke joined us to watch the sunset. Then Sookie took Adele to bed and the two men reached under the old sofa they were sitting on and extracted guns.  
"Holy shit," I gasped as they turned them over in their hands, checking that everything was in order.  
"Silver bullets," Jason boasted. "Top of the range. We ain't gonna put up with no rogue vampire terrorising Sookie. She could go into labour at any time."  
"It's about time you believed her," I muttered, a touch bitterly, but they both pretended to be busy with their guns.

I stood up to stretch my legs and saw Jessica approach from out of the woods that separated her house and Sookie's, followed by her husband and two other vampires. Hoyt shook my hand while the two vampires sniffed discreetly, smelling my tea-stained blood.  
"This is the Queen of Louisiana," Jessica said to them in a warning tone and they immediately shrank back, placing their index and middle finger over their left pulse. Luke cleared his throat and glared at me enquiringly.  
"Courtesy title," I said quickly. "It doesn't really count."  
"It counts to me," Jessica said. "'Cos Eric will kill me if something happens to you. You know, I can't believe that Pam just went back to New Orleans and left you here."  
Ahem. I looked at a point in the semi-distance, pretending to peer at something in the darkness.  
"She _did_ leave you here on purpose, didn't she?" Jessica asked, her voice rising a note.  
"Well," I said. "In a manner of speaking."  
"In a manner of speaking?"  
"In a manner of speaking she didn't," I admitted.  
"Aw, man," Jessica said. "Aw, _man_. Eric is gonna kill me for sure. Are you serious? He's probably awake by now, wondering where you are. You know he'll leave New Orleans immediately, right? He'll be here in, like four hours."  
Reflexively, she checked her watch.  
"More like two," Sookie said, joining us again on the porch. "He can fly."  
"He can fly!" Jessica moaned. "Aw, man!"  
Hoyt cleared his throat and she suddenly realised where she was – and who she was. "We'll just have to catch this rogue vampire," she said with a note of sheriffly authority in her voice. "By the time the king arrives – "  
"If he arrives," I corrected but everyone around looked at me with in a _yeah, right_ kind of way.  
"We'll have him in custody and Eric can dispose of him as he sees fit. So each human will take a vampire and we'll patrol the perimeter of the garden and the woods. Sookie and Maggie, you two stay inside."  
Sookie looked at me and rolled her eyes. "Movie night?" she asked.  
"Yeah, just a minute," I said. I grabbed Jessica's arm, waited till the others had walked down the steps and started walking across the shadowy lawn.

"Do you really think this is a vampire hopped up on Hep V?" I asked.  
"Yes," she replied confidently, then saw my face and her voice wobbled. "Don't you?"  
"Jess, this has been going on for a couple of weeks now – it seems more like systematic harassment than some random infected vampire knocking on Sookie's windows at night. I was there last night, that thing frightened the shit out of both of us and it did it on purpose. It couldn't come into the house but it sure as hell tried to pull me out."  
The vampire hesitated and I could see her thinking. I didn't know how old she was, but she seemed young – both in human and vampire age. She lacked the decisiveness the older ones had and I imagined she'd had many battles to keep the vampires under her in place. She simply didn't have the authority she needed for the job.  
"What do you suggest?" she said in a way that was probably supposed to sound like casual interest but actually sounded a little anxious.  
"I suggest you use me as bait," I said. "I'll go inside and eat something sweet, then I'll come out here and sit on the porch. That vamp will smell me downwind and if he really is infected, he'll waste no time trying to get me. You guys can ambush him, overwhelm him."  
"I don't know, Maggie," she said. "That sounds kind of dangerous."  
"There are six of you," I pointed out, "including three humans with silver bullets. I'd say he doesn't stand a chance."  
She gnawed her bottom lip with her teeth and then said, "Okay, fine. But you tell Eric it was your idea, ok? I mean it, you make sure he knows it. Tell him I didn't like it at all."  
"I'll tell him I made you do it," I grinned. I turned to face the garden and made a sweeping motion. "As the Queen of Louisiana and consort to King Eric, I command you to do it," I announced in a pompous, booming voice like Mr Montgomery's.  
I meant it as a joke, but Jessica actually looked a bit relieved.  
"If it's an order, I guess I have to..." she said.  
"Do it, minion!" I cried and we both laughed. "Okay, I'm going inside to eat some cookies or something. Then I'll come back out here and do my best to look plump and juicy."  
Jessica smiled. "We'll be waiting," she said.

I sat on the porch. The garden was silent, except for the occasional rustle. Whether it was human, vampire or animal, I was not sure. From inside the house came the low sound of TV chatter. If I twisted myself around on the sagging loveseat, I could peer through the window and see Sookie inside. After a couple of hours, I peeked inside and saw her lie down on the couch and shut her eyes.

I'd turned my phone off so I wouldn't have to deal with Eric, so I was reading a Nicholas Sparks book I'd found on the side table beside the sofa. It was well worn, had obviously been passed around a few readers, and the name written on the inside cover in ballpoint pen was _Portia Bellefleur_.  
 _What a pretty name_ , I thought. _So much nicer than Maggie Kennick._  
I looked at my watch. It was after midnight and time was crawling. I sincerely hoped that the vampire would make a move soon, not only for a bit of distraction but also because I didn't doubt that Pam or Eric would be turning up any time to take me home. To put me back on the queenly leash. I mentally calculated how long it would take them to figure out I wasn't coming back and how long it would take them to get back up here. Depending on how fast Pam drove – how quickly Eric flew – they could be here within the hour. I sighed and returned to my book.

Suddenly, there was a rustling in the bushes at the far end of Sookie's garden. As I had already a dozen times that night, I perked up, trying to look tasty. There was nothing to be seen and nothing to be heard.  
Then I heard it, a small sound like a groan, an expiration of breath.  
And a gun went off.  
"Jessica," I said in a low voice. Then, louder, "Jason!"  
He strode through the darkness, his long coat flapping around his knees. I couldn't see the expression on his face, but in the darkness his white fangs shone dully.  
"Jess!" I shouted.  
"You stop right there, motherfucker!" Jason shouted and he appeared out of the darkness, positioning himself on the lawn between me and the approaching vampire. Jason was covered in blood, even in the dull light of the porch lamp, I could see the stickiness on his collar.  
He took aim and shot at the vampire, who continued to walk up the garden at his confident pace. I could see his face now, it was long and thin and scarred. Handsome in its own way, although at that point in time I wasn't much able to assess his looks. As I watched, heart in my mouth, the vampire raised something and Jason's bullets pinged off it – a shield. It looked like a shield. The bullet ricocheted, hitting the wood of the porch and then the back of Jason's leg.  
"What the fuck?" he cried as someone somewhere else took a shot at him.  
"Get in the house!" Sookie shrieked, ripping the window open beside me. I jumped about a foot in the air. "Get in the house, Jason!"  
He started to limp towards the porch. Behind him, the vampire was almost level, a cool smile on his face. The garden seemed alive with shots, the rustling of leaves and branches. I heard a yell I thought was Hoyt's, so I ran down the steps of the porch to help Jason up but he just waved me back.  
"Get in the house," he hollered. "Get in the house and mind Sookie."  
I dithered for a second, pausing on the bottom step and then turned to scamper back up them, just in time to see the vampire kick Jason aside like a mangy dog. A well-planted kick that sent him sprawling back into one of Sookie's flowerbeds. I ran the few short metres to the door, where Sookie was waiting, aghast.  
"You may not enter this home!" she shouted at the vampire, now behind me on the porch. He bent to put down his shield, then straightened up and adjusted his coat. I ducked behind her, and then pulled her back into the house.  
"I forbid you to enter this home!" she declared.

The vampire stopped and looked at us.  
"Are you Sookie Stackhouse, daughter of Earl Stackhouse?" he asked. His voice was surprisingly pleasant, with a crisp English accent like a BBC news presenter.  
"What's it to you, fucker?" she snapped.  
He smiled at her. "And you are Magdalena, consort to the king?"  
"What's it to you, fucker?" I repeated. It was easy to be sassy to a vampire from the safety of behind the threshold.  
He held his hands out, palms upward, as though he were weighing something up.  
"Well, well," he said. "Choices, choices."  
He came closer.  
"Shut the door, Sookie," I warned and she started to push it closed, but the vampire's hand shot out and pressed against the frame.  
"Put your hand down," she snarled. "You may not enter my home."  
She tried to shove against the door and I pushed her gently aside, not wanting her to hurt herself in her pregnant state.  
"Get your hand off this doorframe, _vampir_ ," I said in a low voice. " _Discēde._ You've been told to leave. This is not your home."  
I strained to push the door closed and as I did so, he leaned closer.  
"Nor is it yours," he whispered and his hand snaked around the door to grab my arm. Before I knew what was happening, he'd dragged me outside, my fingers pulling at the net curtain, clawing at the door, looking for some kind of hold. Sookie started shrieking and just as suddenly, the firing from the garden stopped, as though those involved were spellbound by her cries.  
"Stay inside, Sookie!" I roared and Jason took up my plea.  
"Stay inside, Sook," he shouted out of the darkness. Sookie hesitated at the door as the vampire dragged me across the steps.  
"Yes, stay inside," he called as he half-pulled, half-dragged me across the garden. "I'm not interested in you. I've found something ever so much better."  
"Let me go," I hissed, "let me go."  
I tried to bite his hand, break the fingers that were wrapped firmly around his arm, but he ignored me, just pulled me across the grass, dragging me when I stumbled.

As we approached the perimeter of the garden I saw a body face down in the grass. Luke. I started to sob. A second vampire fell into line behind us, a short, plump female. I wriggled in the vampire's vice-like grip, digging my nails into his cold hands, aiming kicks at his legs. He just shook me off, undeterred.  
"Did you take care of them?" the English vampire asked.  
"The two males are gone. I tried to stake the woman but her human deflected it. They're incapacitated but still alive. The human males are –" she paused. "Around here somewhere. I fed on one, but he's still alive. I didn't have time to finish it."  
She had an American accent, but not a Southern one. I wasn't much good with American accents, in my time in the United States I had managed to basically categorise in the country in two dialectal regions: The South and Everywhere Else. She was definitely from Everywhere Else.

She scurried up to walk beside me. We had reached the woods and I redoubled my efforts to free myself. My grandfather and parents had always made me wear silver jewellery when I lived in Ireland – nothing like smacking a vampire in the face with a hand full of silver rings or sticking a silver crucifix in an eye or nose – but since moving in with Eric, I'd put my jewellery away. I could've kicked myself, but instead tried to kick my captor, who just held me up by the scruff of my neck, far enough away from him to prevent me landing a blow.

"Who is this?" his cohort asked curiously. The English vampire pushed aside some undergrowth and we were out on the road, a dark road, not lit by road lights or houses. A feeling of dread grew in my body when I saw a car parked in behind a large tree. "Is this his fairy?"  
I wriggled and scratched, punched and kicked. The vampire sighed and shook me till my teeth rattled.  
"This is something so much better, Marie," he said. "This is his wife. His consort. His _queen_."  
"Seriously?" she said and wrapped her arms around mine as her partner opened the trunk of the car. "That's kinda sloppy of him, to leave her lying around like that. Anyone could take her."  
They chuckled and bent to gather me up.  
"No!" I shouted as they bundled me inside the trunk. "No! Please, no!"  
"That's awesome," she said as they closed the door. "What a coup. Well done."  
And the trunk slammed shut, leaving me temporarily stunned, terrified, in my own pitch-black coffin.


	7. Chapter 7

Being king had been so much easier when Bill Compton was on the throne. All the time Bill had reigned over Louisiana, Eric had mocked him – behind his back and to his face. King William the Righteous. King William the Humble. King William the Noble. He'd sneered at Bill's appearances at Old Folks' Homes, his interviews in local newspapers, his tedious attention to the minutiae of bureaucracy, both vampire and human. If Eric were ever to deign to become king, he would rule royally, like the kings he'd known in the 17th century, or rule feudally, like his own father, who'd killed four men to ascend his throne. Eric would be a real king, a proper king. Not a wincing, mincing bureaucrat like Compton.

However, that was the trouble with a theoretical reign: it had proved to be so much easier than a real one. Eric had quickly found that it was far more satisfying to criticise someone else's efforts than to deal with the realisation that your own were so much worse: because Eric was not a good king. He was a passable king, but he was not a good one and certainly not a great one. Back in the days where he might have wielded absolute power, he could've reigned in the broad strokes he preferred, but in the early quarter of the 21st century, his role of monarch was to execute laws, not peasants.

And Pamela was no help. She'd been more excited about his ascension to vampire royalty than he had been and although she liked to behave like a princess, she had quickly become frustrated at the restrictions placed upon her by her new rank. It had taken her a long time to find a role in the New Orleans administration that was not beneath her dignity (as she saw it) but in line with her abilities (as Eric saw them.) Even then, she rubbed people up the wrong way; she used the kind of vulgarities she'd learned in her life as a whore, something that had amused him no end when she'd been behind the bar in Shreveport. Now, rubbing shoulders with high-ranking politicians, famous celebrities and members of royalties, living and undead, she seemed crass and brassy and she sometimes made Eric cringe.

He sighed deeply when he heard the rap on the door. It was Mr Montgomery, who looked around hopefully, searching for Maggie.  
"Eh... your Highness?" he said in his modulated tones.  
"Yes?" Eric snapped and dropped his pants, then whipped off his top, so he stood naked in front of his retainer. Mr Montgomery, if he'd still been able to, he would've blushed but instead went into a state of rigid shock, his eyes fixed on an object above his master's head. Eric, irritated by the other vampire's prudishness, pulled on underwear, the suit pants that had been laid out over the back of his chair.  
"Yes?" he repeated, as Montgomery stared at the ceiling.  
"Madame, I mean, Ms Kennick has not yet returned?" he asked softly.  
The old fruit loved Maggie. Adored her. He was supposed to be Eric's manservant but he was Maggie's right-hand man, something she attributed to the fact that Eric apparently scared him witless.  
"She's coming back with Ms de Beaufort," he snapped.  
"It's just that ... well, Ms de Beaufort returned an hour ago but Ms Kennick is as yet unaccounted for."  
Eric didn't answer, just grabbed his phone and rang her number. It rang out. He rang again, but she didn't answer. Irritation growing, he typed her a short message, his fingers fighting with the predictive text to produce something logical. If Maggie had been here, he would've handed her the phone to do it; she was faster at that kind of thing than he was and she couldn't bear to watch him clumsily pounding on his phone screen.

He finished buttoning his shirt and grabbed his jacket.  
"Summon Ms de Beaufort," he ordered, striding out of the room. Outside in the corridor, two or three of the palace administrators were waiting. But not for him, he realised, when they melted away at his approach, apologising for being there. They were waiting for Maggie. He didn't know whether this made him annoyed or proud: to his surprise, both his and Pamela's talents for ruling had been vastly outshone by Maggie's talent for reigning. All of his staff liked her; in fact, all of his staff respected her. She was even-tempered, fair and kind. She knew everyone who worked in the complex, vampire and human, and with her own knowledge of vampire protocol and Mr Montgomery's unerring sense of vampire propriety, they ran a tight ship. It was common knowledge that most supplicants turned to her first and he was well aware that she filtered out most of the most grievous annoyances before they got to him. Over the course of the past few months, Eric had developed a feeling for her that he was entirely unfamiliar with: he admired her. Not just physically – she was attractive to him, of course, though that red hair of hers unnerved him still – but he admired the way she worked. The way she ran the business of the monarchy. The way she ran him.

Because he wasn't stupid enough to think he was the boss in their relationship. Quietly, calmly, she'd kept the worst of his temper at bay. When the red rage rose behind his eyes, when the desire to see heads roll made him crack the knuckles of his fingers, she only had to lay a hand on his skin and he felt the surge of warmth run through his cold blood. On his throne, ready to order the staking of another stupid fucker who'd transgressed in some stupid, fucking moronic way, she only had to brush her fingers against the skin of his wrist, smile at him beatifically and mouth the word, _Seda_ – be calm – in Latin and he would pause, wait, till the worst of the fury had passed. And when he passed sentence, she inevitably beamed proudly, applauding his wisdom and judgement.

Maggie played her role of consort so well, he felt she should be given some kind of award – an Oscar award for acting, perhaps. She was obedient and subversive, doing what she was told while actually doing what she wanted. When Pamela, through some sleuthing – calling in some favours and delicately applying blackmail where it hurt – discovered that Patrick Montgomery was not, as he had claimed, a former valet to the Royal Houses of Windsor, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Hannover, but instead a petty thief who'd fled to the United States to escape conviction for robbery with nothing more than the rags he wore on his skinny frame, they'd rubbed their hands in glee. Before finding a place with Queen Catherine, the closest the pompous vampire had ever gotten to a monarch was playing one in comic interpretations of Hamlet and King Lear in Chicago's vaudeville theatres. He was a fraud, Pamela had sneered, a jumped-up little royalist who watched too much _Downton Abbey_. Delighted at the leverage, Pamela and Eric decided to file the information away with other juicy tidbits that were stored for the purpose of blackmail or coercion, something Maggie had found distasteful. She'd shaken her head disapprovingly as Pamela cackled at the idea of revealing Montgomery to be a fake.

But Magdalena Kennick had other plans. When Montgomery came to serve them their blood and tea during one of Eric's meetings with his consort and his progeny, Maggie had cleared her throat and said, "I heard you had a wonderful career in the theatre, Mr Montgomery."  
He'd started, freezing in that way he did when horrified, but she'd ignored his discomfort and said, "Do you know, I even found a likeness of you on an old playbill. You were very handsome, oh my! And playing Hamlet, no less!"  
Then she'd pulled out her tablet to show the older vampire the scan of a playbill from the 1890s, with an ink drawing of Eric's valet's gaunt face, wearing the Scottish king's crown. Montgomery took the tablet and Maggie stood up to look over his shoulder, peppering him with questions. Was the role hard? Did they perform the entire play or only extracts? What was his favourite Shakespearian role?

And rather than it being something Eric could use to keep him in his place, her flattering interest in Montgomery's vaudeville career had made their servant quite loquacious on the subject. Pamela had glared at him, willing him to intervene, but Maggie wouldn't even meet his eye. She led Montgomery to the door, still asking him about his stage career. The older vampire, suddenly animated, delighted to have found a fan, answered her questions and even promised to perform some of his favourite speeches at a later point in the evening. He'd taken his leave with a more theatrical bow than usual, his normally solemn face almost flush with happiness.  
Maggie leaned with her back against the closed door and raised a finger at Eric.  
"You are a king," she said sharply. "Be magnanimous, not vindictive."  
Her words could hit their target unerringly. She'd spent her entire life on the fringe of the European emperor's court, she was measuring him against the old Emperor Charles and finding him lacking. She wasn't assisting him; she wasn't ruling with him, she was teaching him how to reign. And Eric Northman didn't know how that made him feel.

He strode down the corridor.  
"Where is my consort?" he said loudly. "Someone get her on the phone."  
And he thrust his mobile at Mr Montgomery, who was scurrying along beside him. Montgomery looked at the device as though it were radioactive and handed it over to the little female vampire that was hurrying along behind them. Eric didn't know her name; Maggie no doubt would. The vampire said, "No answer, sir, she's not picking up."  
He snatched back his phone and put it in his pocket.  
"Where's Maggie?" he demanded of Pam, as she came towards him.  
"She's not here yet?" she asked, astonished. "But she took my car, she should've been here before me – "  
"Why didn't you travel together?" Eric said, trying not to shout.  
"Because she took my car," Pamela said in that defiant tone of hers that she hated. "I need my fucking car back here, Eric."  
Eric smacked her across the face and the assembled company, vampire and human, hissed in reflex. He balled his fists, trying to control himself. Pamela rubbed her cheek, her eyes glittering with anger.  
"She was supposed to come back this evening," he said in a low, deadly voice. "Where is she?"  
"I'll phone Jessica," Pamela said sullenly. "Let's first establish whether she even left Bon Temps."  
Eric couldn't believe his ears. "Whether she even left?" he repeated. "She was ordered to leave after one night."  
"Yes, well, good luck with ordering Maggie Kennick to do anything," Pam said. "We both know how that goes, my liege lord."  
He resisted the urge to smack her again and she knew what he was doing, stepping out of his range. She pushed the door to a conference room open and stepped inside, the phone to her ear. Eric followed her, closing the door in the faces of the vampires that were behind them.  
"Jessica," Pamela snapped. "Where is she?"  
Eric heard the high pitch of Jess's excited babble.  
"No, he did _not_ know and no, he did _not_ allow it," Pam growled. "Keep the fool out of harm's way, Sheriff, or your head will be on a plate. I'm leaving New Orleans now."  
"We're leaving now," Eric said shortly.  
He whipped open the door, almost treading on the feet of Mr Montgomery, who didn't even pretend to be ashamed of getting caught eavesdropping.  
"I need a plane," Eric commanded. "Now."  
The faces around him gaped, uncomprehendingly.  
"NOW!" he roared and, as though someone flicked a switch, they all started to move, running in all directions.

 _* Reading along? Drop me a line (well, write me a comment) and let me know ;-)*_


	8. Chapter 8

I lay in the trunk of the car, my knees knocking and my teeth chattering. Something – shock, adrenalin – was coursing through my veins and I was shaking badly. I could barely breathe, drawing short, sharp breaths as though I was running out of oxygen. Wait – was I running out of oxygen? Did people asphyxiate in the trunk of cars? I started to thump the door, barely able to move my arm enough to hit it. Tears ran down my face and the deeper I inhaled, the less air I seemed to get.

It took me a gigantic effort of will, a superhuman effort of will, to stop and be calm. I lay in the darkness and tried not to shake, listening as hard as I could. I'd expected the vampires to drive off but the car was still. What were they waiting for? Who were they waiting for?  
Was it Eric? I wondered.  
It was clear that he was the reason I was taken, maybe they were waiting for him to show up. My heart soared. Sure, there were two of them, but Eric was old enough to take on several vampires. And if he had Pam... The thought seemed to work like a balm. Suddenly my heart began to slow and the rushing noise in my ears stopped. Faintly, I heard the sound of the vampires outside. I strained my ears but couldn't make out any words.

Suddenly, the lid of the trunk was thrown open. Even though it was dark outside, the light of the moon was still surprisingly bright compared to the deathly dark of the trunk. I squinted, my hand shding my eyes till I made out the English vampire and his associate above me. They grinned at me wordlessly, then a face pushed past them and thrust itself into mine. I shrieked.  
"Gunnar," said the English one. "Stop it, now. No need to scare her to death. What good is she then?"  
But Gunnar remained an inch from my face. His was gaunt and lined, his hair was matted grey and it smelled foul. His eyes, watching me, were as blue as my own and eerily young in such an old face. Because he had been old when he'd been turned, which was unusual. Up until a century ago, people's life expectancies were short. No vampire in his right mind would have turned an old human, with all of an old human's physical defects – and by standards back then, people were on the other side of middle-aged in their forties. This vampire could've been any age when he was turned, as people suffered a life of deprivation and hardship, but one thing was sure: he'd been old at his turning, his body well worn and weary.

And he stank. One of my – talents? Advantages? Crosses to bear? – as a carrier was that I could smell vampires, smell their memories, the last traces of their human lives. Eric smelled of the sea, that cold, biting smell of sand and wind and fish. His skin smelled cold, something I couldn't explain in words – how can something smell the way it feels? But when he was in a good mood, his skin smelled warm, of spiced apples. I'd asked him why, but he wouldn't tell me; in fact, whenever I brought it up, he pulled away abruptly, as though I'd just lifted the lid to his brain and had a peek inside.

But this vampire didn't smell of sweet apples or salty sea; he smelled rank. Whatever he'd been in his human life, it had involved something foul. I couldn't bear it, I flinched away and that made him smile and his fangs – long, yellow, chipped fangs – pop out. He opened his mouth as far as he could, as though he were going to bite my head off, and made a hoarse hissing sound, the same sound he'd made as he'd come through the window. Because it was him; I don't know how he did it but as soon as he made that sound, I realised that the thing that had been outside Sookie's window rattling the window frame was him.  
"Gunnar," said the English vampire with exaggerated patience. "Leave her be. Don't frighten the asset."

Gunnar paused, then opened his mouth even wider. I shrank back, pressed against something hard in the car, not caring how much it hurt. Then I realised he was showing me something and it took me a second or two to figure it out: he had no tongue. His tongue had been removed, severed at the back of his mouth. A wave of bile rose in my throat and I covered my mouth, afraid I would vomit in the car and they would lock me back up in there, in the darkness, in my own vile mess. The grey-haired vampire saw that I had seen, nodded his head at me, and withdrew out of the car.

"Please," I begged the English vampire, who seemed to be the boss, "please don't lock me up in here. Please. I get claustrophobic, I'm afraid I'll throw up. Please."  
I was aware that I was weeping but I had gone beyond the point of caring.  
"I swear to you, I swear to God that I will behave. I won't try to escape. I swear."  
I sounded so pathetic, even to my own ears.  
"Well, I don't actually believe in God," he whispered with a glint in his eye, as though he were revealing some kind of daring secret. "But I suppose I could be persuaded to let you ride in the back with Marie."  
The relief washed over me like a wave and I made a move to crawl out the back.  
"But wait," he said, " _Quid pro quo_. Your blood."  
"No, I can't," I replied quickly. "You can't, I belong to Eric Northman."  
Normally those words would've stuck in my craw, but I had never been happier to bond myself to a vampire than right then. Property of Eric Northman. Hands off.

The English one hunched down, his arms resting on the rim of the trunk. He lay his head on his arm and looked at me. Once again it struck me how attractive he was, in a ridiculous way. His nose was straight and too long; his mouth was always twisted in a tiny smile, like he had a secret he was saving for himself; and his eyes were such a dark shade of brown, it was hard to tell whether or not the pupils were dilated. His skin bore a number of scars, a cut or two, some tiny pockmarks along his cheekbones and his chin was too broad for such a narrow face. And his hair – I'd been used to Eric's carefully cut and groomed blond hair, but this one had a shock of dark hair that was cut bluntly and carelessly around his face. Yet the sum of the parts was very compelling and now that sum was resting casually on his arm like a pillow, as though we were lying side by side in bed. It was frighteningly intimate and it made me shrink back even further in the car.

"We're about to leave," he said in his modulated tones. "And I am about to close the lid of this boot and lock you back in. If you want to sit in the back like a good girl, I'm going to need a gesture of good faith. You're a carrier and I've heard you're one of the ones that carry dreams. Is that right?"  
I hesitated, then nodded.  
"Then I'd like to try your blood, if I may."  
Oh, shit. I shook my head instinctively.  
He stood up and reached for the lid.  
"No!" I said and stuck out my arm. He hesitated for a moment and sank back down, taking my arm in his cold hands. His fangs popped out and he gently pierced my skin, massaging my arm tenderly to stimulate the flow of blood. He did not drink greedily; instead he sipped quietly, then licked a finger and rubbed the puncture wounds, waiting to see that they were healing before extending a hand to help me out.

Gunnar and Marie were standing by the side of the car, looking at me curiously.  
"In the back with Marie. You'll find out soon enough what's happening," he said and fished the car keys out of his pockets. He held the back door open for me and as I bent to get into the car, I smelled him – he smelled of wood, of freshly-hewn wood, earthy and rich and summery. I glanced up at him and he smiled down at me, his black-brown eyes danced.  
"Yes?" he said, probably in reply to the startled look on my face.  
I could've asked him anything: where we were going. Why they had taken me. What they wanted from me. Why they had some beef with Eric. But at that moment there was only one question to the forefront of my mind.  
"What's your name?" I asked.  
His smile grew broader.  
"Hræfn," he said in a low voice, almost a caress, and I made him repeat it.  
"Rayfin?" I ventured, as close an approximation as I could get. He shrugged, _meh_ , and said, "It'll do," before putting a hand on the top of my head to push me down into the car.  
"What does it mean?" I asked, as though this were the question I really needed answered at that moment in time.

The female vampire, putting on her seatbelt beside me, said, "Hræfn?" with far better pronunciation than mine. "Yeah, it's Old English, isn't it? So it's what it sounds like. _Hræfn_ ," she said again, impatiently, as though I were a dim child.  
Hræfn? Rayfin?  
I got it. The dark-haired vampire looking at me in the rearview mirror was called Hræfn – the Raven.


	9. Chapter 9

The car sped along the dark roads and out on to the interstate. I saw the signs for Shreveport pointing the way we had come and I realised quickly that we were heading north. Gunnar and Hræfn sat up front, talking in a language I didn't recognise. At least, Hræfn did the talking and Gunnar, who was driving, turned to look at him now and again and make that eerie hissing sound that I now understood was how he communicated. At one point they laughed uproariously and Marie, who'd been wriggling in agitation on the seat beside me, could finally stand it no longer.  
"It's really rude to talk in front of people in a language they don't understand," she said peevishly. "Speak English!"  
"We _are_ speaking English," Hræfn said and turned in his seat to me. "I don't suppose you speak Old English, Ms Kennick?"  
Marie snorted. "Like, yeah. Like, she speaks Old English."  
Shyly I said, "Well, I actually took a class in Old English at university," I said. "We read _Beowulf_."  
" _Beowulf_?" the dark-eyed vampire said and a grin spread across his face.  
I cleared my throat:  
 _"Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,_

 _þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,_

 _hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon."_ I recited.

It was all I could remember, but Hræfn gave me a round of applause and even Gunnar took his eyes off the road to nod approvingly at me in the mirror. Marie snorted and looked out the window.  
"And Old Irish?" Hræfn asked eagerly, as though I had another linguistic party trick up my sleeve.  
"I can just about get by in modern Irish," I admitted reluctantly.  
"A pity," he said and looked almost sad.  
I'd often wondered about that: those old vampires who spoke languages now long dead, the only ones who remembered what their mother tongue had sounded like. I had asked Eric once if he missed his language, but he'd looked at me as though I were crazy.  
"Norse didn't disappear from one day to the next," he'd said. "It evolved, it adapted and it developed to become modern Swedish and Danish and Norwegian. The language police didn't flip a switch and eradicate it."  
"That's not what I meant," I'd said, my cheeks pink, "I mean, do you _miss_ it? Do you not sometimes long to hear people speak the language of your human life?"  
And he'd looked at me in his assessing way, wheels turning in his head, before he answered: "You are so sentimental, Magdalena."  
Then he changed the subject.

"Do you miss hearing people speak Old English?" I asked Hræfn without thinking. He rubbed his nose, considering the question.  
"Yes," he finally admitted. "You can hear academics try to read _Beowulf_ , but it's not the same. It's what they think it sounded like but it's not the living language."  
He paused, then turned to look at me, his eyes black in his white face, fixing me intently.  
"It's lonely," he said quietly and it seemed like the entire car was still for a second. His face suddenly looked drawn, vulnerable. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He looked away and I started to breathe again, as though he'd let me off a leash.  
Beside me, Marie's eyes bored into the side of my head. When I looked over at her, she shook her head infinitesimally, a look of warning. I felt suddenly ashamed. This vampire had kidnapped me and abducted me and was taking me to an undisclosed location and I felt sorry for him? Because he was _lonely_? For crying out loud.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, trying to sound confident and no-nonsense.  
"Well, first and foremost across state lines," my captor said cheerfully. "Out of Northman's initial jurisdiction, that's our top priority at present. Once we're in Arkansas we can stop if you need to powder your nose or whatnot."  
He smiled at me again.  
"Arkansas is friendly," I said smartly, "He won't mind extraditing you straight back to Louisiana if you get caught."  
"Ah, see, that's where you are wrong. Arkansas is friendly to everybody," Hræfn said and his smile became a wide grin.  
And damn him, he was right. The King of Arkansas had been put in place by the Vampire Authority a long time ago, mostly as a result of desperation and a dearth of loyal vampires in Little Rock. King Thomas of Arkansas would much rather have been left in his position as accountant to the Arkansas monarchs, but instead he was plonked on the throne with the task of causing no ripples, rocking no boats and firmly cementing the status quo. Eric despised him but had courted his support with alacrity, suffering his company during long lavish dinners of blood sorbet with Tru Blood cocktails. But Arkansas's first priority was to be on friendly terms with as many of his fellow monarchs as he could and, at worst, cautiously neutral towards those he could not stand. Towards Eric he was cautiously neutral, occasionally melting into something resembling friendliness when he remembered our shared border.

So, no, he would not do anything that would cause a fuss. King Thomas would sooner pretend we had never entered or left his state.  
"Where are you taking me?" I asked again, more firmly this time. "And _why_ did you take me?"  
"You're the Queen of Louisiana," Marie said. "Like, more or less. And we took you because you stood on that fucking porch and shouted it across the garden. Seriously, bitch..."  
"Marie," Hræfn said in a pleasant tone that had a sharp undercurrent. She got the message.  
"We found out about the fairy and discovered where she lived. Thing is, we couldn't get her to leave the house so we could grab her. And she's pregnant, which is a bit inconvenient. Humans die during birth, right? Then you came along, served yourself up – say, why didn't he send someone to protect you? You don't just let your human run around like that, especially not one like you. You're a carrier, aren't you?"  
I didn't deign to answer, just stared her down.  
"Do you have fae blood, too?" she asked eagerly.  
"I'm Irish," I muttered. "You can't throw a stick in Ireland without hitting someone who has a bit of _Sidh_ in them."  
She looked quite happy at the thought.  
"Anyway," she continued, undeterred, "we even thought about going down to New Orleans to get you if we couldn't get the fairy to come out, but obviously that was the absolute last resort. Shreveport is so much better, so what a stroke of luck that you decided to come up here and hang out on her porch."  
Stroke of luck? Not for me, anyway.  
"What's so great about Shreveport?" I had to know. I hadn't quite figured it out in my short time there.  
"Closer to the border, baby!" Marie whooped and a WELCOME TO ARKANSAS sign flashed by.  
Gunnar held up his watch and Marie read it off. "Twenty-eight minutes. Just like you said. Great work, Gun."  
The grey-haired vampire grinned, turned to look at me. I gave him an ironic thumbs-up. Thanks for abducting me at warp speed, Gun.

"Do you need to use the bathroom?" Hræfn asked solicitously, like a primary school teacher.  
"No, thank you," I said primly.  
"Then I suggest you sleep," he said in his quiet voice. "There's not much to see in the darkness."  
And his hand stretched out to stroke my cheek, a caress that was as light as a feather and as cold as stone. But I caught the smell of sun off his skin and it made me look up, into his white face. He stared at me for a moment and his fingertip brushed my lip.  
"Sleep well," he said. And added in Old English, " _Gōde Niht_ , Ms Kennick."  
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck again. There wasn't much I could do till we got where they were taking me, so I closed my eyes to escape his.

*Thanks for reading along!*


	10. Chapter 10

Eric Northman scared the shit out of Area Five's sheriff and it took her all her courage to keep her knees from knocking.  
"He's just a bully, Jess," Hoyt said in a low voice as Northman slammed the door of the car shut with such violence that the bodywork seemed to vibrate. "Stand up to him, hon."  
That was easy to say. Jason Stackhouse was being tended to by his sister, who was dabbing his neck with a cloth soaked in antiseptic spray. He was yelping like an injured animal, something that Sookie was patently ignoring. Her husband was sitting on the steps of the porch, pressing a pack of frozen peas in a towel to his head. The two vampires, Tyler and Gomez, were both dead – eviscerated by the grey-haired one who moved so silently and so stealthily that the other vampires could barely detect him. Jessica and Hoyt had briefly come face to face with the dark-haired one, who'd stood before them, fangs extended for an interminable moment, till some sound on the porch had made him stop. He'd swung the metal disc he'd held at Hoyt, knocking him backwards in a spray of blood. While Jessica had fallen to her knees to check her husband, the other vampire had started to stride up the lawn, his head bowed intently as he stalked his prey on Sookie's porch.

Northman stood in front of them silently, Pam behind him. He seemed to draw in a breath, something Jessica knew he did out of habit – a trick to gain him a second or two before he unleashed his wrath.  
 _Three – two – one -  
_ "What happened?" he said in a low voice, so low the humans had to strain their ears to hear.  
"It was a planned attack," Jessica said. "We thought it was, like, a crazed vampire with Hep V but it wasn't. We were attacked."  
"Ambushed," Hoyt added but Eric whipped around to stare at him. Hoyt raised his chin defiantly but Eric did not flinch. After an instant her husband looked away, sullen.  
"There were three of them," Jessica said carefully. "At least three. Two of them kept us busy and the third went up to the house to get Maggie."  
"Did she not go in the house?" he demanded.  
"Of course she went in the house," Sookie said, looking up. Her face was tear-stained and flushed. "Of course she did, Eric. But he came on to the porch and yanked her out."  
"Yanked. Her. Out?" the vampire repeated, enunciating every word.  
"Yanked. Her. Out," Sookie said, standing up. Her tone was mocking. "I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the concept of yanking, King Northman. Y'all yank humans about quite a bit, as I recall."  
Eric looked her up and down, taking in her pregnant belly. The two of them stared at each other until Sookie's husband reached out a hand and grasped hers. Then she looked down at him, her face wreathed in a tender smile. Pam snorted.

Eric turned back to his Sheriff.  
"Who was he?" he said. "And where did he take her?"  
"I ... I ... I don't know," Jessica stammered.  
" _Sheriff_!" he shouted and Pam shushed him.  
"Stop that," Sookie scolded. "You're in my yard, on my lawn. You watch your mouth, Eric Northman. None of us know who he was. And obviously if we knew where he'd taken Maggie, we'd already be behind him."  
"He had a British accent," Jessica said, eager to be helpful. "Tall, thin, dark hair, dark eyes, and a British accent."  
"English? Scottish? Welsh?" Eric asked. "Define British."  
"He, eh, it sounded, um, I don't know. I don't _know_. I don't know what a Welshperson sounds like," she replied, suddenly feeling a sense of despair. Eric always made her feel stupid.  
He rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation, only exacerbating her despondency. She'd never been able to figure out why he'd appointed her Sheriff but had come to the conclusion that it was due to some sense of residual loyalty towards Bill Compton, rather than having its base in her own merits. She'd never felt entirely sure that she'd deserved the post and the ill-will of the vampires in her sheriffdom had made it all too clear that they didn't think she deserved it either. And now – now she'd majorly fucked up and he was standing in front of her on the bloody lawn, looking at the raggle-taggle little group that had survived the swift and deadly attack.

He conferred quickly with Pam in Swedish, and then said, "We guess they've already left the state. Sheriff, we will go back to your residence immediately. I want you to call the King of Arkansas and have someone apprehend them if they've crossed into his territory. In the meantime, your human can call the airport in Shreveport and make sure no private planes have left in the past hour."  
"The name is Hoyt," said the human in question but Eric barely acknowledged him.  
"What are you going to do, Eric?" Sookie asked sharply. "You got some super-smart plan to get her back?"  
He glared at her. "You know, Ms Stackhouse," he said, approaching her, "in the good old days, I would've flown down that shitty little road till I picked up their trail and found them, then I would've ripped the unbeating hearts out of every single one of those fuckers. I would've crushed those organs to pulp in my bare hands. But nowadays we do things by the _Charter_."  
He spat the word out in disgust.  
"So I'm going to phone the Central Vampire Council of these here United States of America and lodge an official complaint that my consort has been abducted, like a good little king."

He turned to Jessica and smiled at her, his fangs extended.  
"That's what I said, isn't it, Sheriff?"  
"Yes, sir," she answered.  
"So if anyone asks," he said to the assembled humans, "that's the course of action I recommended. Is that correct?"  
Luke and Jason looked at each other and shrugged.  
"I guess," said Hoyt.  
"Good," he said. "Glad that's clear."  
And he took off into the darkness of the garden at speed.  
"What's he doing?" Luke said, placing the bag of peas on the porch beside him.  
Pam laughed lightly. "Why, he's going to fly down that shitty little road till he picks up their trail and finds them, then he's going to rip out their unbeating hearts and crush those organs to pulp. Keep up, honey, keep up."


	11. Chapter 11

I was woken by a rough hand shaking my shoulder. Gunnar jerked his thumb and indicated I should get out of the car. I could tell by the light that it wouldn't be long till dawn, so I yawned and stretched and looked around. We had parked in front of a pretty grotty-looking motel, whose neon light blinked and hissed as regularly as a heartbeat.  
"Are the rooms even light-tight?" Marie whined.  
Hræfn answered patiently, "The ones we've booked apparently are, darling. But how light-tight they are is anyone's guess. You might end up sleeping in the bathtub."  
"Fuck's sake..." she muttered.  
"It wouldn't be the first time," he answered cheerfully.  
"Why won't that fucker at least pay for a proper vampire hotel?" she complained.  
"Because that's the first place Northman and his lackeys would look," Hræfn said with an edge to his voice to suggest his patience was wearing thin.  
She yanked her bag out of the back seat with more than a little ill-grace and stomped off towards reception.  
"Majesty," Hræfn said and gave a little bow to indicate that I should follow. "I suppose it does not need to be said that any attempt to escape on your part with end with your quick and sudden execution," he said conversationally, falling into step beside me. Gunnar flanked me on the other side, grinning down at me from beneath his mane of wild grey hair.  
"Yes," I said. Not that I didn't intend to try to escape, but I wasn't stupid: I'd choose a time and situation where I actually had a chance of survival. Taking off across a motel parking lot was not the craftiest plan I'd ever come up with – but I would take my chances when the time came.

"Who was Marie talking about? The one who won't cough up the cash for a decent hotel?" I enquired. Gunnar shook his head quickly.  
"Like I said," Hræfn said, flashing me his sudden smile, "when the time comes for you to know, you will know."  
We stood outside the reception till Marie came out and flung a key at Gunnar.  
"C'mon," she said to me and nodded at the stairs.  
"Where are you going?" Hræfn said.  
"One room for boys, one room for girls," she answered mockingly. "Right?"  
"How do I know you won't drain her?"  
"I won't drain her. Okay, so I might have a little snack, but seriously, Hræfn? I'm not going to drain her."  
"Give her to me. You and Gunnar take the other room."  
"Gunnar?" she whined again. "For real?"  
"Again, Marie," he answered sharply, "It wouldn't be the first time. Get over it."  
He turned to me and inclined his head to show that I should go first up the stairs.

Hræfn shut the door and pressed the button that lowered the electric shutters. They creaked and groaned and closed under protest, but when they were down they made the room light-tight. He pushed the draught excluder across the bottom of the door and looked around.  
"Well, it's not the Ritz," he said.  
I was standing beside the shuttered window, not sure what to do or what would happen next. He opened the fridge and took out a Tru Blood, which he opened and emptied into a glass. While it was warming in the microwave, he took out a bottle of beer and threw it at me.  
"It's American beer, so it'll taste like warm piss," he said in his crisp English accent. "But needs must."  
I couldn't help but smile as I took a sip of the beer.  
"What's wrong?" he asked.  
"You sound like someone I know," I said. "Someone I work with in New Orleans."  
Someone who would be worried sick about me, wringing his hands in despair, his love of royal protocol battling his need to harass and nag Eric to find me fast and faster.  
"I see," Hræfn said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He patted the mattress and said, "Oh, come on. I'm not going to do anything untoward. What kind of man do you think I am?"  
"You've already had my blood," I pointed out.  
"But I did ask," he said.  
Fair point.  
"Come on," he said again and I compromised, pulling the armchair up so I could sit opposite him. He regarded me with a wry grin and took a swig of his drink.

"So, tell me," he said, "what's a nice lass like you doing with a prick like Northman?"  
"You know him, then?"  
Hræfn shrugged. "If you're a certain age, you pretty much know everyone who's anyone."  
"So how old are you?" I asked.  
"Older than Northman," he answered. Then considered it. "Not by much," he confessed. "A century, maybe. He doesn't know himself how old he is. Those savages up north were too busy raping and pillaging to get their timekeeping straight."  
It wasn't strictly true, but there might have been some residual Anglo-Saxon/Viking resentment at play, so I let it slide.  
"What happened between you?" I asked.  
Hræfn raised the glass to his lips again and looked at me over the brim. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure your husband has no idea who I am any more," he laughed. "I was a small fish on the periphery of his existence, I'm afraid."  
"Then how do you know him?"  
"Everyone knows Northman," he said. "Everyone remembers Northman. Last time I met him was ... let me see... 1650? 1651? That's right, in London, 1651."  
He drank his Tru Blood and grinned at me.  
"Really?" I said. "Wasn't that...?"  
I racked my brain, trying to remember which king was on the throne back then. English history was not my forte.  
"Cromwell," he said, almost reading my mind. "That was under Oliver Cromwell, a gloriously grim period of English history. What do you know about the Puritans, Majesty?"  
"Not all that much," I said. "They banned Christmas. And dancing – oh, and they wore black. And Cromwell is hated in Ireland, he carried out a lot of atrocities there."  
"He was a bastard," Hræfn said. "Transported thousands of heathen Papists off to the West Indies as slaves. Little children, separated from their parents and sent away on slave ships? Yeah, a bastard."  
We sat in silence for a minute or two, each in our own thoughts.

"And how did you know Eric?" I finally asked. I had to know. He told me next to nothing about his past and it irritated me like a constant itch.  
"Well, he had the balls to stay," Hræfn said. "Most of our kind left when things took a Puritanical turn. As a race, we vampires are fond of our dissipation, as you know. But Northman stayed."  
"And you stayed," I pointed out.  
"And I stayed," he said. "I stayed because initially I thought Cromwell might have been a true man of God. How wrong I was."  
His grin widened and his fangs glinted in the light of the bedside lamp.  
"Crazy, right? A religious vampire. Well, there were a few of us. We thought we could do penance for our existence by leading a pure and virtuous life and find favour in the eyes of God."  
"And that's why Eric stayed?" I asked. I couldn't imagine Eric Northman flagellating himself for anyone's version of God; he claimed to be more of the flamboyantly nihilistic type, but I knew he had a small stone artefact in his desk, a hammer of Thor. For all I knew, he prayed to his gods on a daily basis.

In any case, Hræfn's estimation of Eric's religiosity was similar to mine; he threw back his head and laughed.  
"No, Majesty," he said. "Northman stayed because he had assets in the country: land, money, investments. That's how I knew him. At the time I worked for a lawyer called Maddox, Thomas Maddox, a vampire as well. He handled most of the affairs of the vampires that remained in England, and I was ... I suppose you might call it _an associate_ today. I did much of the grunt work, in a manner of speaking. I'd always been interested in the legal field so when I met Thomas Maddox, he suggested that I finally study the law of the land and go into business with him."  
"And you handled Eric's affairs?"  
"No, no, that was Maddox. I don't know how his bank account stands nowadays, but back then he was immensely wealthy. See, you mightn't know this, but your husband has a knack for aligning himself with the right kind of people and he never seemed to have difficulty coming out of a situation with some kind of financial reward."  
"He can be pretty single-minded," I agreed. It was one aspect of Eric's personality that I found breathtaking: breathtakingly admirable and sometimes breathtakingly worrying.  
Hræfn stood up and got me another beer. He was, I noted, very solicitous. And observant.  
"So do you want to hear the whole story?" he asked teasingly, knowing I did. I nodded.  
He began.

"Back then, Northman was quite a prominent figure in our community. And the human community as well. I personally have always favoured a policy of keeping my head down, but Northman likes to hide in plain sight. He was a member of all manner of groups and donated money to guilds and even helped to finance the renovation of his local church. He attended evening church services in winter when the sun was down and rarely opened his mouth with quoting the Bible. He was, for all intents and purposes, the picture of Puritan living.

But rather than find it commendable, Thomas Maddox was only too aware that Eric was sneering at us behind his sleeve for our piety and modesty. In the sanctuary of Maddox's offices, he openly mocked the lawyer for believing in this Christian God, this dour, joyless manifestation of the Christ. Maddox could not berate him for his public behaviour but used every opportunity to lecture him on the evils of his ways and tell him that when the time came for him to meet the True Death, he would go straight to hell without stopping. That only made Eric laugh. You know what he's like: I'd sit in the poky little office next to Maddox's and watch Northman lounging on one of the chairs, his legs stretched out on the good rug, laughing his head off, while Maddox became almost apoplectic with rage. But what could the lawyer do? He could hardly renounce him: renouncing one of us would have exposed us all. All he could do was continue to give Eric sermons about his debauchery and his depravity."  
I raised an eyebrow in a tell-me-more way, though in truth I wasn't entirely sure whether I wanted the full details of my consort's wild past.

Hræfn looked at me, looked me up and down slowly.  
"He was debauched," he said. "He was _depraved_. Maddox and I prayed daily for the conversion of his soul. Behind the closed doors of his house, he had a cellar full of alcohol and a constant stream of people in his bed and each others' beds. Anyone, human or vampire, willing to risk their immortal life for a night or two of serious sinning knew to make their way to Northman's home. Does that shock you?"  
"No," I said. These glimpses of Eric's other life or lives never shocked me, but it gave me an icy sensation in the pit of my stomach, one that I usually tried to ignore.

Hræfn studied me. Like a lot of vampires, he could stare openly without feeling the need to excuse himself or look away when an unacceptable amount of time had passed. He just regarded me like an insect under a microscope and I tried not to squirm.  
"But what did it matter what went on behind closed doors?" he continued. "Outside, he was a pillar of the community. Nonetheless, it wasn't long before rumours started to circulate and a couple of the rumour-mongers disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Northman began to feel hunted and came to Maddox, looking for advice. I had always said that the Viking should leave England – go to France, live at the French court and indulge all of his vices. But Maddox had another plan: he should marry. Maddox would arrange the marriage to a nice Puritan girl, one that would give him a veneer of respectability and hopefully curb his worst excesses. So he found a girl – it was a girl, not more than seventeen or eighteen – from a respectable home. She was immensely pretty and not very bright, but devout and dutiful and she quickly fell head over heels in love with Eric.

Of course, I was against it from the start. It didn't seem right to involve this innocent in the affairs of a much older and much cannier vampire, but her family were delighted with the match. She brought little or no dowry with her, all she had in her favour was her religious fervour and her pretty face. Eric was in agreement; he was easily swayed by a pretty face. Their marriage was marked with enough food to be sufficient but not excessive, and enough music to be pleasant but not celebratory. No dancing, naturally, and no alcohol. It was a very Puritan wedding, to be sure. And that was that, for a while."  
"What happened then?" I asked. Hræfn touched his fingers to his earlobe and we both looked at his bloody fingertips.  
"Dawn is approaching," he said. "But I will finish before we go down for the day. Where was I? Oh, yes. For a while, we thought that we had conquered the Northman, turned him to our ways. He seemed to settle down, he seemed to have found a new sense of purpose in this new status as a respectable married man. And then he had a son."  
"I'm sorry?"  
"And then he had a son," Hræfn repeated carefully.  
"How could he - ?"  
The vampire looked at me. "How could he?" he repeated.  
"It wasn't his," I said dully.  
"No, it wasn't," he replied. "I don't know if the girl knew about his true existence but it would seem she had become tired of his proclivities, his humours and his inability to sire children. So she found herself pregnant – by an obliging servant – and she thought Eric would believe it his own. He was furious, of course, and stormed into see Maddox to talk about dissolving the marriage. But again, Thomas talked him around: let the girl have a child. It would keep her busy and keep her mind off his matters. And it would stop the talk; at a time when having a large family was tantamount, it looked suspicious that such a big, virile man could not produce any off-spring of his own. Eric swallowed his pride and accepted the child with a kind of cool disinterest. At least, that's how it seemed to me. When I saw their little family at midnight services, he always stood a little apart from his wife and the baby, as though he wanted nothing to do with them. So that was the start of it, Majesty. In total, I believe Northman fathered four children."

Hræfn laughed, an unexpectedly loud laugh.  
"And with each child, his disposition became grimmer and his little wife happier. Gradually, he began to slip back into his old ways. By this time, however, Puritanism had hit its peak and Cromwell was ruling like a dictator, something that riled the Northman no end. He was drawing attention to himself by making treacherous statements about Cromwell and by poking fun at religious rituals. But he's clever – no one could pin an accusation on him. So his enemies came at it from a different angle: it had not gone unnoticed that his children bore no resemblance to him whatsoever. They were handsome little things, dark haired and dark eyed like their real father, a fellow who took care of his horses. His wife was pulled before a council of elders and made confess to her sins. She and her lover were punished severely for their crimes – he was executed, as adultery was a criminal offence. The children were declared bastards and Northman was disgraced as a cuckold, a fool."  
"And what did Eric do?" I asked, my mouth dry.

"He left for France," the vampire said shortly.  
"But what about his wife and children? I mean, the children?" I asked, anguished. "He didn't just abandon them, did he?"  
"In a modern context, he certainly did. Maddox had to draw up a death certificate and free him from that particular human existence, so his wife lost her lover and husband within a matter of weeks."  
I felt ... disappointed.  
"Don't look so glum," Hræfn said. "He wasn't all bad. He left a handsome sum of money to her, which I personally delivered along with the address of a house near Plymouth. He had bought specifically for them – far away from London and from nosy neighbours. Mistress Northman took her children with her to the south of the country and that was practically the last I heard from her."  
"Practically?" I enquired.  
"Well, Northman bequeathed her the money with an odd request. When she remarried, she was to return his ring. And, lo, a few years later she found a comfortable widower who didn't know the provenance of her children and the ring turned up in a letter on Thomas Maddox' desk. As luck would have it, Cromwell was dead by then and the English were already scrambling to have their rightful king return to his throne, and Thomas Maddox had abandoned his office in London and moved to Edinburgh. Too many people knew his association with Cromwell's cronies and it didn't make him popular. One of my last tasks before I closed his office was to send Northman the wedding ring, on behalf of Thomas Maddox. But God knows why he wanted it."  
I knew why he wanted it. I thought of the hidden drawer in his desk, the small collection of wedding bands, his record of all his past marriages. Instinctively I glanced at my own fingers, bare of rings, wedding or otherwise.  
Hræfn followed my glance. "He has not given you his ring yet?" he asked coyly.  
"He's tried," I said sharply.  
Hræfn laughed out loud again. "I like you, Majesty," he said. "You've got gumption."

He put down his bottle and plucked a tissue from the box beside his bed, to wipe away the bloody streaks on his face.  
"Use the bathroom," he commanded. "We will go to sleep soon."  
Unnerved by the change in tone, I did what I was told, rinsing my mouth with water in lieu of brushing my teeth. When I went back into the room, he was lying on the bed, his eyes shut.  
"Lie down beside me," he said, not opening his eyes. Slowly, reluctantly, I did so. His hand shot out and circled my wrist and, almost instantly, he went into that shut-down mode that I recognised as vampire sleep. I raised my hand and his held fast, the fingers clasped around my arm like a bracelet. He was making sure I would not move while he slept, becoming my very own vampire hand cuff. I sighed and wriggled on the lumpy bed, trying to find a position comfortable enough to sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

I tried to turn from side to side in that lumpy motel bed, but it wasn't easy when attached to a vampire. I could raise my arm to lift the blankets and slip under them, but when I cautiously tugged at his fingers to see if they could be prised open, Hræfn shut them more firmly around my wrist, only relaxing the grip when I stopped wriggling. Clearly, he was not awake, but he was aware of my presence on some level and, equally clearly, he was not going to let me go. I heaved a deep sigh and wriggled around some more, trying to find sleep.

When I next woke, it was because there were people talking outside my door – about where to go for dinner.  
"Hey," I shouted, my voice hoarse. I swallowed and tried again. "Help!"  
But they'd walked past. I lifted my left arm and pushed Hræfn 's fingers aside to check my watch – it was just after 5 pm. Close to dusk, close to the time of their wakening and our onward journey. I looked around the darkened room and tried to figure out a plan to escape. Hræfn 's phone was on the table, out of my reach, but I wondered if I could stretch myself along the bed, leaving my wrist in his grip, and extend my fingers as far as I could to grab it. It was worth a try, anyway. I glanced over at him, ready to wriggle, and stopped for a moment.

He was dreaming.  
His mouth was moving; he was talking silently to someone, nodding his head. Behind his pale eyelids I could see his eyes moving back and forth as he conversed with someone in his dream. It was spooky but somehow compelling. I always watched Eric dreaming, sometimes lying beside him, propped up on my elbow, so I could study his face. I watched emotions flicker across his face, watched him frown, or smile, or even laugh to himself. Sometimes I caught snatches of words or names. It was fascinating and oddly touching: it felt as though I were eavesdropping on some secret conversation or looking at some personal scene. When his face crumpled in his sleep – in remembrance of some disappointment or defeat – I stroked his forehead, traced the wrinkles in his skin, laid a warm hand on his cold cheek. It felt intimate, but at the same time I felt like an intruder, like I was invading his dreams. And when he woke, he never spoke of it. If I asked him how he'd rested, he looked at me warily and said, "Fine. Why?"

So I watched the dark-haired vampire beside me for a few moments, feeling the same strange mixture of curiosity and shame. Suddenly, he started and his eyes opened for a second or two, held mine and closed again. I almost jumped out of my skin and only seconds later, when my heart-rate had returned to normal, did I realise that he had let me go.

I lifted my hand and regarded my wrist as though I'd never seen it before, then scampered off the bed as though it were on fire. The adrenalin was pumping so hard, I stood in the middle of the room and dithered, not knowing what to do first, only knowing I had to get out, fast. I dived for his phone – he'd turned it off, the bastard. I whirled around, looking for the key to the door and found it, almost dropping it in my haste to jam it into the keyhole. One turn, the door was unlocked. I paused for a second, considered raising the blinds and letting my captor fry, but then realised that the end-of-day-light would brown him like toast, but that was all. While I briefly considered it, I caught sight of his face on the bed; turned towards me, his lips still moving, he looked young. And vulnerable. I decided against it. I told myself that I didn't know whether the sound or light would wake him in rage, but if the truth be told, I couldn't find it in me to want to hurt him. I couldn't even begin to unravel that line of thought, so I slipped out the door and ran.

Panicked, I sprinted down the walkway past the other rooms, catching a glimpse of inhabitants in one or two, before I turned around and ran back the way I came, down the stairs and into the courtyard like a headless chicken, turning this way and that. I spotted the sign for the reception and made a run for it, past the empty swimming pool that contained only a couple of dirty puddles and a broken deck chair. The sun was low, dipping behind some pink clouds, and this only served to make me panic more. I knew very old vampires could venture out in dusk, even as the last rays of weak sun were visible, and I had no idea what the two males were able to endure. So I banged through the reception door, startling the young man behind the desk half to death.

"I'm being held captive!" I cried. "The vampires who checked in here tonight have kidnapped me! I'm the consort of the King of Louisiana and I need your help!"  
My voice was squeaky, my speech garbled. The man behind the desk, whose badge identified him as Tyler, looked at me as though I'd fallen out of a spaceship. He  
"Call the police!" I cried. And then snatched the phone on the reception desk away from him when he reached for it slowly. "Please use your cell, I need to call someone."  
"Um, yeah," he said and began to casually pat his pockets down.  
"Hurry!" I cried. "And lock the door, please!"  
Out of the large windows, I saw the door of the room next to ours open a crack as someone peeped out, testing for darkness. I didn't know which one it was but I had a feeling it was Gunnar and the thought made my knees weak. But something in my voice had spurred Tyler to something akin to speed; he ambled out from behind the desk and locked the reception door, then considered it for a minute before placing a bar across it.

I screwed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate on remembering someone's phone number. Damn mobile phones: you didn't have to remember anyone's telephone number any more. Which was all fine and well until you were stranded somewhere with nothing but the realisation that the only number you could remember was your parents', probably the last number you'd had to learn by heart. This was the case for me, their number in Dublin hadn't changed much since I was at school – but what on earth could they do to help me? By the time I explained what was happening to them, by the time my mother had let me get a word in edgeways, I'd have a vampire's fangs deep in my neck and Tyler would be in four or five pieces on the reception floor. Pam's number! Pamela had chosen her birthdate as her number – what was her birthdate? Oh, God, I should know it: I'd spent enough time looking for her last present. I tapped in the code with shaking fingers and saw Gunnar coming out of the room, shielding his eyes with his arm. I could've sworn he saw me; staying in the shadows, he slid over to the door of Hræfn 's room and banged it roughly.

Pam's birthday. 26th March, 1871.  
I pressed 2631871 into the phone and waited. A man answered with a gruff, "Yello?"  
"Wrong number," I said and hung up.  
Gunnar took a step back and banged the door with his shoulder. It splintered and gave way.  
"Hey!" shouted Tyler, who'd been standing at the door, phone dangling from his hand, as he watched Gunnar trying to break into the room.  
"Phone the fucking police!" I shrieked and redialled the code. What was Pam's number? I knew I had her birthday right, why wasn't it working? Shitshitshit. And then it dawned on me: of course. In the US, the month came first, then the day.  
So fucking stupid, Magdalena, I cursed myself and dialled 3261871, almost collapsing with relief when I heard it ring. It rang and rang for an eternity, though probably just seconds. While I waited impatiently, I saw the vampires outside the room talking with their heads bowed in a huddled group. I was about to throw the handset back in the cradle and dive behind the desk when Pam's cool voice snapped, "Yes?"  
"Pam? Pam, it's me," I cried.  
"Maggie? Where are you? What happened?"  
Even in these bizarre circumstances, a tiny part of me was glad to hear that Pamela sounded upset.  
"I don't have much time," I said, watching Gunnar pointing at the glass-fronted reception. "I don't know where we are, I think it's Arkansas – "  
"Wooster, Arkansas," Tyler said helpfully.  
"Just phone the police, Tyler," I shouted, "before I fucking kill you! Listen, Pam, Wooster, Arkansas – the Sleep Rite Inn. There are three of them, I don't know where they're taking me – "  
The three vampires were taking the stairs at speed. I had seconds, just moments before they came crashing through the door.  
"Did you catch names?" she shouted. "What are their names?"  
"Hræfn ," I said and heard her repeat it, puzzled. "The other one is Gunnar and a female called Marie. The males are British, don't know more."  
Hræfn was standing in front of the glass, directly opposite me. I looked at him and he bared his teeth at me, his long fangs popping out. Tyler gasped.  
"Tell Eric – " I shouted as he shattered the glass of the door, "Tell Eric I need him!"

Then I threw the phone down and scrambled over the desk, looking for something to defend myself with. I picked up a pen and hid it up my sleeve, pressing myself back against the wall. Hræfn tossed the receptionist aside like a piece of trash and walked up to the desk, leaning his elbows on the counter as though he'd come for a chat.  
"Who did you call, darling?" he asked, a glint in his dark eyes.  
"My therapist," I answered glibly.  
Behind him, Gunnar was holding the receptionist high above his head by the collar; the poor boy's face was turning a dull blue.  
"Put him down!" I commanded but Gunnar ignored me.  
"Put him down," Hræfn said and the receptionist was dropped, crumpling to a heap on the group. "Answer the question, Majesty, or I will eviscerate him."  
Tyler moaned.  
"Pamela de Beaufort," I said, figuring they only had to hit redial to find out the answer for themselves.  
Hræfn sighed. "Time for us to leave, then."  
He reached over the counter and pulled me out with the same vice-grip he'd used in Sookie's house. His free hand reached for mine and he gently extricated the pen from my grip, looking at it with his habitual grin.  
"Were you planning on staking me with a Bic?" he asked jovially.  
The thought seemed to amuse him no end.  
I stared sullenly at my shoes.  
"Well," he said, ignoring my silence. "We must leave before the esteemed Mr Northman catches our trail. He doesn't like people playing with his things so we should be out of here long before he arrives. Take care of this," he ordered Marie. "We'll wait in the car."

They walked me off, Hræfn 's arm around my shoulders so we looked, for all intents and purposes, like a couple strolling towards their vehicle. I glanced behind and saw Marie glamouring the receptionist, then disappear in the back, probably to wipe security tapes. I sighed.

Hræfn opened the door of the car and indicated that I should get in. With as much ill-humour as I could display, I got in and turned my head from my captors to stare dully out the window at the dusky parking lot. They spoke among themselves in their English until Marie returned.  
"Done," she said shortly.  
"On to our next adventure!" Hræfn announced theatrically, as though we were setting off for Disneyland. Gunnar caught my eye in the rearview mirror and started the car.

x - x - x

 _As always, nice to see you again! Please leave a comment if you're enjoying it, it's nice to know that someone out there is reading along ..._


	13. Chapter 13

The pains started before noon. Just tiny waves, but enough for her to know that it had begun.  
Sookie knew the night she had been through would take its toll, she had just hoped – in vain – it wouldn't induce labour. She breathed deeply and picked up her phone to send Luke a text. He'd gone to work late on barely a couple of hours' sleep; best get him home as quickly as possible so he'd be able to take a nap before he took Adele to Arlene's. It could be a long night, as long as the night before.

The previous night had ended with everyone packed into her kitchen: Luke, Jason, Pam, Hoyt and Jessica. And Eric, of course. While the others had gathered around the kitchen table, drinking coffee or Tru Blood, he'd leaned against the back door he'd once had fixed for her and stared out into the dark garden. He'd come back after an hour of searching looking less than his usual pristine: Pam had tut-tutted and pulled leaves and twigs out of his clothes and hair. He'd joined the rest of the group in Sookie's house but had stood apart, his forehead in deep furrows. Just as Jason recounted for the third time how the black-haired vampire had strode across the garden – "He just fucking marched across that lawn like he damn well owned it!" – Eric had straightened up and walked out, leaving the rest of them looking at his silent departure in momentary confusion.  
Jason raised an eyebrow.  
"Leave him," Pam said, raising a hand. "He's just pissed."  
Sookie cleared her throat, pushed back her chair, then stood up and followed him, not meeting her husband's reproachful eyes.

Eric was standing on the porch, scrolling through his phone.  
"What do you want, Sookie?" he asked, without looking around.  
"I was just wondering if you were okay," she said, lowering herself carefully into the swing seat, trying to manoeuvre her extra weight into a comfortable position.  
"Fine and dandy," he said in a monotone.  
"We'll get her back," she said. "Sure we will! She's the Queen of Louisiana, Eric. Your human – your wife! They can't just, you know, take her."  
"That's the problem," Eric said sourly. "She's not the Queen of Louisiana. And although she's known to be my human, she's not my wife. So technically, they _can_ take her. They can feed on her and if they kill her, the punishment will be a fine and not the True Death. It's hardly a deterrent, just a minor inconvenience."  
Sookie said nothing.  
"But you know that," Eric continued. "I can smell her in your house. You've spent time together and I'd be surprised if you two didn't compare notes."  
There was a note of bitterness in his voice.  
"Yeah, we did," Sookie said lightly. "We compared notes on all the bizarre shit you do, and came to the conclusion that you are one weird vampire."

Eric put his phone in his pocket and turned to look at her, a grim smile on his face.  
"So glad I amuse you two," he said.  
He opened his mouth to say something and closed it again.  
"What?" she probed.  
"It's just that ... I told her this would happen. I told her time and again why we had to make our bond public, make it official. I even agreed to do it in Ireland, though God knows I haven't been there in centuries and that for good reason. But, no, she keeps refusing. I tried to fucking _explain_ – "  
Sookie shushed him as his voice rose, and he checked himself.  
"- I tried to explain that it wasn't just some needlessly romantic gesture; it was for her own protection. So crap like this doesn't fucking happen."  
She shushed him again and pointed a finger upstairs.  
"You wake my daughter and I swear to God, Eric, you'll be putting her back to sleep yourself."

He smiled again.  
"You like being a mom, Sookie Stackhouse?"  
"I love it," she answered, with a forthright honesty that surprised her. "It is my life's blood, Eric."  
He nodded slowly, keeping his head bowed. His blond hair fell down over his forehead so she couldn't see the expression on his face very well.  
"Is this what she wanted?" he asked in a low voice. "Is that why she won't bond with me?"  
"To have kids? Become a mom?" Sookie asked. "I don't know. Maggie never mentioned children, Eric."  
He didn't respond.  
"Honestly," she said quickly, "it's not about that, Eric. I don't think she even considers the fact that you can't father children – "  
As soon as she'd said it, she could've bitten her tongue off. Sookie hadn't meant for it to sound so ... so _accusatory_ , but there it was. It was said.  
"Eric," she said softly, "I think she's more aware than most humans of the difficulties of having a vampire boyfriend. Or partner. Or spouse, or whatever it is you guys would be. Maggie's not naive enough to go into it thinking that it's going to be all sunshine and roses and she's just thinking things through thoroughly. You can't blame her for that, can you?"  
"So it's not me, not specifically me?" he asked. It pained Sookie to hear him sound so anxious.  
"It's not specifically you," she lied. And Eric knew it.  
"Sookie?"  
"Yes, okay, it's you. You're very ... _Eric_ , Eric. Stop making that face. You know what I mean: you're just so ornery. Life with you is like being on a rollercoaster – either everything is amazing, awesome, breathtaking, or you're plunging downwards towards disaster. And sure, a girl loves a good ride on a rollercoaster – but not every day, Eric. And she's living down there with all those people around all the time, all the responsibility, all the politics. I sure wouldn't do it."  
Sookie rubbed her belly.  
"I told her she must be pretty special to put up with you," she finished. "'Cause you are one hell of a pain in the ass."

He sank down on the seat beside Sookie, his large frame causing it to rock dangerously for a couple of seconds.  
"She is my Queen," he said finally. "She is the right one to be by my side. That is why I want her back and that is why I will tear any vampire who touches her limb from limb."  
"You'll get her back," Sookie said and she patted his arm. It was the first time she'd touched Eric in years. She'd forgotten how cold his skin was and she drew her hand back to the warmth of her own lap.  
"We will take our leave," Eric said in that suddenly formal way of his. "This whole incident has been unfortunate."  
He made to stand up but Sookie said – she couldn't help it, the words tripped off her tongue – "You know one thing that really puzzles me, though? Despite everything, despite the fact that you two are practically married, neither of you ever talks about love. Maggie skirts around the issue, like she's afraid to say it, in case saying it might make it true. She won't even let herself think it. And you only talk about her as your _queen_ , in terms of her role, her function by your side."  
Eric stared at her, not understanding.  
"You never even call her by her name," Sookie said gently. "Not once tonight have you mentioned her by name."  
"That's not true," he snapped.  
"It is," she said.  
He stood up carefully, in order not to rock the seat too much, then extended a hand to help her up. When Sookie stood in front of him, he paused for a minute. She watched him think.  
"I call her Magdalena," he said, picking his words carefully. "It is one of the few things in our lives that is completely private. We close our door and sit on our sofa and it's just the two of us. It's what I call her when we are alone."  
He held the door open for her.  
"But that probably doesn't make much sense," he said.  
"It makes perfect sense," she replied.


	14. Chapter 14

I had never been fond of nesting vampires. As a rule, they tended to be more vicious, clannish and susceptible to influence than those vampires who chose to live alone. Democracy was never at the fore in vampire circles, despite their attempts to form councils and pen charters - all it took was one strong-willed vamp and the others fell into line. They had an instinctive awareness at all times of their place in the hierarchy of things: who was bigger, stronger, older, more powerful? And nesting vampires generally sorted themselves into a kind of micro-dictatorship, with one vampire inevitably taking the lead and pushing the others down till they all bent to his or her will. They followed pack rules and there was always an alpha: in my experience it was the vampire who was the most brutal or sadistic, the one that was the sneakiest or the slyest. I disliked nest vampires because it was a constellation that encouraged them to behave closer to animal than human, and those who lived in their nests didn't see anything wrong with that.  
On the contrary, they liked to think it was the natural order of things.

Marie was one such example. I knew she was part of a nest because of the way she treated me: as though I were a random inanimate object, like a pillow or a plank of wood that had somehow ended up on the seat beside her. She'd clearly been used to living with the kind of humans that were so riddled by glamouring or addled by drug use that they had long since succumbed to the passive subservience that the nesting ones preferred. She spoke about me as though I wasn't there, a kind of rambling stream-of-consciousness directed at the two men in the front, completely ignoring the fact that I was sitting by her side.  
"Where did Northman find her? I heard she belonged to the Empress of Europe beforehand and she gave her to him as a thank-you for getting Catherine off the throne. Do you think she's Northman's only human? Does he have other carriers, do you think?"  
"Ask her," Hræfn answered patiently.  
But she barely glanced at me, leaning forward to place her torso between the two of them, so she could twist around and talk to Hræfn face-to-face.  
"Is it really true that they make you dream? Did you dream? What did you dream about? Do you know what would be cool? We should all try her and see who dreams first. We could take bets – that would be so cool! We could take bets! But how would we know, though? – "  
"You won't have her," Hræfn said. "I had First Bite."  
"First Bite doesn't apply any more," Marie said crossly. "No one claims based on First Bite. That's so outdated."  
"I do," Hræfn said. "And she's mine."  
"She's _not_ yours. And you're going to have to hand her over in a few hours anyway, so it won't apply there, either, because he's definitely going to taste her. So why can't I, as well?"  
I cleared my throat in a theatrical way: _a-hem!_ But no one took notice.  
"She's mine, Marie," he said calmly. "I took First Bite, she's mine. Do you object, Gunnar?"  
Gunnar mutely shook his head.  
"Majority rules. Settled, then."  
"That's not fair!"  
"Quiet, Marie," he said. " _Magister dixit!_ "  
"Say it in real English," she pouted. "Some of us don't speak, like, ancient English, you know."  
"That was Latin, actually," he replied and his eyes danced. He looked at me and smiled, showing the tips of his white fangs. When he laughed, his dark eyes almost snapped and crackled with mischief. It was hard not to smile back.  
 _"Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur_ ," I said quickly and he laughed out loud.  
"Now, what did you say?" Marie said, her head whipping around.  
"He told you to be quiet, the teacher has spoken. And I said a phrase that means something like 'anything that's said in Latin sounds smart.'"  
I glanced up at Hræfn, who was nodding approvingly.  
" _Brava, regina!"_ he said.  
"You two," she spat. "Showing off with your dead fucking languages. I know why you're doing it. You make me feel – "  
"Mighty real?" Hræfn shot.  
"No, you make me feel – "  
"Brand new?"  
"Fuck you. No, you make me feel like – "  
"A natural woman?"

I couldn't help but laugh and Hræfn laughed with me. Marie turned on me, fangs extended, hissing like a cat, and instinctively I shrank back against the door while Hræfn tried to pull her away. Without missing a beat, Gunnar took a hand off the steering wheel, reached his long arm back and gave her a sound smack on the side of the head. The crack it produced sobered us all up quite quickly.  
As far as possible, she turned her back on all of us, pressing her face against the glass.  
"I'm telling him," she said. "I'm telling him everything."  
"You'll tell him what I tell you tell him," Hræfn warned.  
"You have no power over me, vampire," she said. "You have no power over anyone. And if you think you can make her yours by having a sip of her blood, then you should that you're mistaken."  
"I can claim her if I want," he said resolutely.  
I could bear it no longer.  
" _No one_ can claim me," I said loudly. "I am not claim-able – " (did I make that word up?) "- as far as you're all concerned, the only person who has any claim on me is the King of Louisiana and you all should know that he will call for the True Death for what you've done."  
Fighting words.  
I tried to make myself look fierce and, certainly, Marie looked startled by my sudden feistiness. Which, of course, anyone would be if you started getting lip from, say, a pillow or a plank of wood. Gunnar looked over at his friend who didn't return his gaze; Hræfn was staring at me with a smile playing around his lips. He pulled a locked of his black hair thoughtfully, tugging it gently as he watched me for a moment or two.  
"Hmm," he said.  
I didn't like the sound of that.

We stopped after an hour because my growling stomach could no longer be ignored. We trooped into a roadside diner and the vampires ordered coffee. I studied the menu and tried to find something that wasn't fried or deep fried. It was difficult.  
"Fried chicken," said Hræfn suddenly. "I've always wanted to try fried chicken. Humans love to deep fry poultry."  
I suddenly realised the reason for his interest in my menu choices. Crossly I ordered a burger and fries and a defiant side of garlic bread. Hræfn glared at me, then at the waitress.  
"We will not be needing the garlic bread," he said.  
"You will not be needing the garlic bread," she repeated without blinking and crossed it off her pad.  
"Nice try," he said and raised his coffee cup in a mock toast.

It was an awkward meal. Marie stared out the window, ignoring us, Hræfn spoke softly to Gunnar in their shared language. I ate slowly, thinking quickly. When I'd finished I stood up and nodded at the sign for the ladies' room.  
"Marie," Hræfn said and she heaved a sigh.  
"I want to go by myself. Don't you think it'd look weird otherwise?" I said innocently.  
"Again, nice try. Women always go to the loo in groups," Hræfn said. "No one will bat an eyelid. _Marie_."  
She slid out of the booth and followed me wordlessly to the restroom, where she stood outside the cubicle, making it hard to pee in peace. I hummed tunelessly to drown out the sound of my human functions – I could almost hear her outside the door, shuddering in horror at the disgusting workings of our mortal bodies – and washed my hands swiftly under her disdainful gaze.

When we returned, Gunnar was paying, counting out dollar bills with inordinate concentration.  
"Come on, babe," Hræfn said in his mischievous way, and placed an arm around my shoulders, leading me out the door ahead of the others. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and the waitress gave us an _"Aww, cute!"_ look and a little wave.  
He chuckled beneath his breath.  
"Eric Northman is going to kill you," I said in a low voice. "He is going to rip your heart out."  
"Yeah?" he said. "I'm terrified."  
And he laughed, then sobered up quickly and whispered, "Why do you feel the need to be loyal to Northman when you know he cannot be loyal to you?"  
I jerked beneath his arm, as though he'd pricked me with something sharp.  
"He _is_ loyal to me," I said firmly.  
"Is he, though?" Hræfn said, sounding puzzled. "I have known of Northman a long time and I have never known him to be loyal to one human alone. He has had wives, yes, but he has always had lovers, I'm sure."  
"You've known _of_ him," I said, "but you haven't _known_ him. He's loyal to me."  
"Really? Well, that's good, I suppose. You _can_ teach old dogs new tricks, after all. Well done, Louisiana."  
I said nothing. I knew what he was doing. Hræfn looked down at me, smiling so broadly that his dark eyes were almost slits, his fang-tips visible between his lips. He pulled me closer, close enough to for me to smell his scent, that foresty smell of fresh wood and pollen.  
"I would be loyal to you, Majesty," he whispered. "I would protect you like Northman cannot."  
I shrugged him off.  
"Fuck off," I said angrily. "I know what you're doing. Quit trying to play me, you shithead."  
He looked at me quizzically.  
"I'm not trying to play you," he said in a hurt tone.  
"Play _with_ me then," I returned.  
"Nor that, either."  
We stared each other down till Gunnar waved a hand between our faces and pointed at the car, his craggy face creased in a frown. He made a hissing noise at Hræfn and it was clear what it meant.  
"She knows what I say is true," Hræfn said calmly and walked over to the car. Gunnar grabbed my arm and steered me after him, all the time shaking his head reproachfully. It felt like I had done something wrong – but what? Everything about the situation I was in was frightening and confusing, it felt like the ground was constantly shifting beneath my feet.  
"Eric," I thought, "Please come and get me. Please, please."  
I didn't know if he could hear my thoughts or feel my emotions, but hoping he could was my only comfort, and a cold one at that.

 _xxx_

 _Hej, hej! Thanks for reading, it's nice to see traffic stats shoot up when a chapter is posted – this is a lot of fun to write. Please comment if you're enjoying it; it's great to get some feedback and know what you think about where we're going on this adventure ..._


	15. Chapter 15

_Watch out – smut ahead. Gasp! Not safe for work._

She sat naked astride his thighs, his erect cock in her hands, moving her fingers gently up and down his length.  
"Don't call me _lover_ ," she complained. "It's weird."  
"Why is it weird?" Eric asked. He leaned forward to cup a breast but she batted a hand away.  
"Because it's basically a job description. Do you expect me to get excited about being called _Woman Who Changes Bedsheets_ or _Woman Who Meets Chamber of Commerce_? No? Well, stop."  
Maggie laughed and her grip became firmer, moving a little faster.  
"Let's talk about this later," he said and this time put his hands on her hips to pull her to him. He wanted her to sink down on him, to be enclosed in her heat.  
"So what would I call you in Norse?" she asked suddenly, bending her head a little, so her red hair fell about her face.  
"You would say ... " he closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensation between his legs. "You would say, _Thu er sa stór ok langur_."  
She repeated it and he laughed so hard, she almost lost her balance and fell off.  
"What does it mean?" she cried.  
"It means ... _you're so big and so long_. That's romance, Viking-style."  
"You are a narcissist," Maggie said, releasing him from her grip. She lay on an elbow beside him, her breasts pressed against his ribs. Eric bent to kiss a nipple and pushed her down beneath him.  
"What would you say in Irish?" he asked. She exhaled deeply, a note of longing on her breath.  
"What?"  
Her pupils were fully dilated, inky black. She put her fingers in his hair and pulled it gently.  
"What would you say in Irish?" He gently parted her legs with his knee, moving himself to enter her.  
She laughed a husky laugh. "Yeah, ironically, I would say, _A Eric, mo chroí. A cuisle mo chroí._ "  
She gasped as he pushed inside, moving beneath him to accommodate him, tugging him hair so he'd lower his face to hers. He kissed her upper lip, her cheek, feather-light, and he moved slowly till she found his rhythm.  
"What does it mean?" he whispered. "Why is it ironic?"  
She stretched her two arms behind her head, a pose that always made him thrust faster; she looked abandoned, wanton. She answered, but he didn't catch it, so he arched over her, lowering his face to hers, continuing to thrust into her, a little deeper each time.  
"It means my heart. Pulse of my heart," she answered, smiling at him. "Perfect for a vampire, don't you think?"  
He didn't say anything, just moved beneath her till she dug her nails in his back and buttocks, pulling him in deeper and faster. Before he came, he bent his head and whispered,  
"Say it again."  
" _A Eric, mo chroí_ ," she said as he came, " _a cuisle mo chroí_."

x

"Am I disturbing something?" Pam said from the doorway.  
Eric looked up, suddenly glad that everything below his waist was hidden from view by his desk.  
"No," he said shortly, clearing his throat.  
She came in and perched on a corner, looking around at their old office. Fangtasia hadn't changed much, except for the new manager. He'd been booted out of the office when Pam and Eric arrived and was currently serving drinks behind the bar, looking nervously over at the office door, wondering how well Eric intended to check the books.  
"You've made all the official calls?" Pam said. "The Council knows she's missing?  
"Of course," he growled.  
"Hmm. And what did the Empress say?"  
Eric rolled his eyes.

At the best of times, Moya Kennedy, Empress of Europe and the North African Territories, had always been a humourless bureaucrat. Now, at the worst of times, Eric realised that dealing with her was akin to talking to a brick wall. He hadn't always got on with the old Emperor – in fact, they last time they'd met, it had ended with Eric punching him on the nose – but Emperor Charles had been bold and daring, characteristics that Eric generally admired. Moya was many things, but bold and daring she was not.  
"What do you mean, she's missing?" she said. "How can your consort be missing?"  
Eric gripped the phone tighter, almost crushing it in his large hand.  
"She was taken, Empress, by unknown assailants. It will be made common knowledge tonight; the Council is currently checking the other monarchs to make sure no one has, eh, borrowed her. I wanted you to know first."  
"Am I to tell her family?" Moya asked. "Because I can tell you now, her grandfather will kill you."  
"I'm not afraid of an octogenarian."  
"Then you have never seen him wield a stake," she said grimly. "This is very clumsy of you, Eric. It's not like you have a dozen humans to take care of, you know. How could you not have taken the proper precautions? She's one of the Five Families; aside from the fact that they have the means and motivation to find and kill you, she is a carrier to boot. You must do everything you can to find her, vampire."

And then she had refused to let him access the Book of the Undead. The world's largest vampire database was in the hands of the Europeans. Originally compiled by the Five Families as a record of all of the vampires they encountered, it expanded to fill a dozen hand-bound books, filled to the brim with information about makers, progeny, pseudonyms, whereabouts and any misdemeanours noted by their higher-ups. Eric had never read his own entry but Maggie, who had, had laughed and said it ran to several pages and made for interesting reading. Now the entire thing had been transferred to a computer database and it was jealously guarded by the European vampires and their trusted humans. If the male vampire was European in origin, chances are he was in the Book of the Undead.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," the Empress said icily. "You know how this works now, Eric. Request access through the Council in the US and it will be passed to us, evaluated and vetted, and then the vampire in question – if he is in the database – will be asked if his information can be accessed by a third party. Things have become very strict, I'm afraid."  
 _I'm afraid_? Eric could've snapped the phone in two. Moya was one of the key parties behind the introduction of the Vampire Charter, the very bureaucratic milestone that was keeping their beloved database behind lock and key.  
"So I should do everything in my power to get her back," he'd snapped, "except breach data protection? Welcome to the new, politically correct World Order. Fuck that."

"She refuses to help me, she says that the Empress of Europe cannot be seen to give an American king access to their fucking database," Eric said to Pamela.  
"Phone James Kennick," Pam said. "Don't look so blank, Eric. Her uncle James. The archivist. He has access to the Book of the Undead."  
"He won't help me, either. They won't let me access it as the King of Louisiana."  
"Fool," Pam replied. "He has access to it as a member of the Five Families. They literally wrote the fucking book, after all. So phone him up as Maggie's husband and ask him to help you as Maggie's uncle. Where's the problem with that?" she asked, snapping her fingers.  
Eric stared at her and reached slowly for the phone.  
"You know, that might work," he said. "Only problem is, I don't have his number."  
Pam sighed.  
"Oh, _Eric_ ," she said and pressed the redial button.  
The phone clicked and beeped as it connected with a phone in the Dublin Vampire Parliament, thousands of miles away. Someone picked up and Pam hit the speaker button.  
"Vampire Authority, Dublin," a smooth voice purred.  
"Pamela here," she answered. "Can you put me through to the archive, please."  
"Can I say what it's in connection with?" the receptionist sang.  
"A family matter," she said.  
"Putting you through."  
Pam handed Eric the phone.  
"James Kennick," a deep voice said. "How can I help you?"  
For the first time in days, Eric's face broke into a grin.


	16. Chapter 16

"Oklahoma," I said coldly.  
It wasn't just where we found ourselves – though only moments earlier we had whizzed over the Arkansas border into Oklahoma ("Discover the excellence!" the sign proclaimed) – it was for the measly little man standing in front of me, the vampire king of the afore-mentioned state. It had always amused me when the vampire monarchs got together, addressing each other only by the name of their state (Louisiana, I used to tell Eric, sounds like a flirt. A good-time girl. When I wanted to annoy him, I'd address him as Louise and he'd just roll his eyes in return.) Now faced with the monarch of the state, I didn't feel like calling him "Your majesty" or anything else even close to obsequious. So I followed vampire protocol and called him Oklahoma.  
"Miss Kennick," he replied without a smile. He wrinkled his upper lip at me, a sneer. "Well done, you guys. This is much better than what we'd expected. Well done to all."  
The four vampires behind him nodded, a couple looked like they might clap. They dressed in black from head to foot, wearing ski masks. I imagined that Oklahoma thought it made them look more dangerous, like special ops forces or ninjas. The king of Oklahoma, protected by ninjas? If I'd been inclined to smirk, I would have. Instead, heart heavy, I looked at where we'd stopped: we were standing around in a wooded clearing, one that had a couple of picnic tables and an overflowing bin. It was a place cleverly chosen; the noise of traffic indicated that the interstate wasn't far, but we were screened from any observation by passing cars.

Hræfn , standing beside me, took a step closer.  
"What is your plan for her, Majesty?" he said.  
"Your part is done, Rafe," the king smiled. "We'll take it from here. I'll see to it that you get paid."  
Hræfn – Rafe – gave him a stiff smile in return.  
"May we continue to escort her back to Tulsa with you?" Hræfn asked. His fingertips brushed the back of my arm. I tried to shake him off but they remained there.  
"Why?" the king asked. "The agreement was to bring her or the fairy over the border to me. You've done it. You'll get paid. Now fuck off back to whatever hole you crawled out of."  
Gunnar hissed but Oklahoma just waved a hand dismissively. He was a slight little thing, with mousy hair that had started to thin at the time of his turning. I tried to remember his allegiances, wondered what Eric had done to piss him off. As the wheels were turning in my head, he stepped forward, grabbed my chin and turned my face from side to side like a piece of livestock. Then he leaned in and smelled me.  
"Carrier," he breathed. Then, with my chin still in his firm grip, he said, "I have a couple, too, you know, but the carriers from the Old Country taste so much better. I think it's that little hint of fairy that you all have. I look forward to tasting you."

This time is was Hræfn who hissed – or, more precisely, exhaled a thin breath of air through clenched teeth. The king looked up sharply, then yanked my head to one side to look at my neck. I didn't think there were any fang marks there but he knew differently.  
"Rafe!" he snapped. "When did tasting the merchandise become part of the fucking deal? For fuck's sake. Well, that's ten per cent off. Take note of that, Darleen. Ten per cent off for sampling the girl. Fuck's sake. She better not have had your blood, Rafe, or the fucking deal's off. Did he give you his blood?" he asked me. I tried to shake my head in his firm grip.  
"Fucking lucky," he said. "Now get out of here," he said to Hræfn and Gunnar. Marie, standing behind the king, grinned at them in a most self-satisfied way. Before they turned to leave, I saw her stick her middle finger up at Gunnar, hiding it quickly when the king turned her way. The two vampires walked towards the car, Hræfn lagging behind his grey-haired friend. I watched him open the door slowly, staring at me as he did so. I kind of shrugged at him, not knowing what to do. An hour ago being abducted by him seemed like the worst thing to have happened; now, somehow, things had become worse than worse – they were teetering on disastrous.  
"You know what to do," the king said to Marie. She nodded and got into one of the cars, driving off down the little road Gunnar had taken. The king watched her drive off and then turned his attention back to me. "Come," he said and wrapped his cold fingers around my arm so he could drag me behind him.  
"My husband will see to it that you are given the True Death," I hissed. "You are not allowed to take another vampire's human, much less the spouse of a reigning king. When the vampire authority hears about this ..."

"Miss Kennick," he said, throwing open the door of a large black car, "I can call you Miss Kennick, can't I? Because we both know that you're not married to Louisiana. You're his favourite blood bag, his dinner. Let's not put too fine a point on it, sweetheart."  
He placed a hand on the top of my head and pushed me down, into the car. I tried to press back, push him away, but he had vampire strength and even my adrenalin-fuelled fear came nowhere near close enough to getting him away.  
"Anyway, Miss Kennick," he said conversationally as he shoved in beside me, pushing me along the back seat, "I don't give a shit what Louisiana says or does. By the time he finds you, whatever is to happen will have happened. So, frankly, your pathetic threats are a waste of breath."  
He hooked two fingers under the collar of my top and pulled it down. I tried to strain away but he dived in after me, his fangs extended.  
"No!" I cried, hands flailing, trying to scratch and claw his face. But he coolly grabbed my hands and shoved me again, so the back of my head hit the door of the car. I saw stars for a second and he used the opportunity to lean in and sink his fangs into my neck.

It hurt.  
It always hurts and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. But when Eric did it to me, he was usually doing other stuff to me that distracted me from the pain – or, at the very least, provided adequate compensation for the discomfort. But Oklahoma was simply gnawing and sucking at my neck, my head rhythmically banging against the hard armrest of the car door, my body twisted awkwardly underneath him. All I could do was close my eyes and count. I concentrated on counting; every second I counted was one second less to endure it. But it didn't seem to end. I quickly began to feel tired, weak, my limbs went limp and I could no longer tense them against his weight. Lying there like a rag doll, I realised that he was draining me.  
"Stop," I whispered. "Please stop."  
And, astonishingly, he did. He picked up my arm, which had fallen to my side, and checked my pulse, pulling a face as he did so. He looked almost embarrassed.  
"Got a bit carried away," he mumbled to himself. "Oh, well."  
I looked at him, his face covered in my blood, pooling down the front of his shirt. I watched a trickle of my blood dribble down his chin and felt a corresponding tear roll down my face.  
"I would give you my blood," he said to me, removing his shirt, "but that would be crossing the line, wouldn't it? Don't worry, though, you'll be right as rain in now time. Just lay there and relax."  
"Lie," I whispered.  
"Sorry?"  
"Lie there," I croaked.  
"Are you ... are you correcting my _grammar_?" he said, pulling a clean shirt from a bag in the front seat. He was still sitting half-astride me and his weight was almost too much to bear.  
"Yes."  
"Alright, then Miss Kennick. Just _lie_ there, you pedant."  
I closed my eyes. It wasn't much of a victory, as victories went, but it was the only fight I'd won that night. I felt my body slip out from under me and my consciousness floated, leaving my bloodied body sprawled across the back seat of Oklahoma's car.

I woke when the door was flung open again and a man dressed in black pulled me roughly out. My legs were like jelly and a second man had to support me on the other side to stop me from collapsing. Oklahoma was rubbing his hands and I turned my head to look at the approaching cars that was making him so gleeful. They pulled in beside us and I looked with as much curiosity as my tired body could muster to see who was behind the darkened windows.  
"Texas!" shouted Oklahoma as the door opened and David DeMarco, king of Texas, got out of the car. He smoothed down his chinos and instinctively checked that his belt buckle was centrally placed before he came forward. Marie got out of the car behind him, pulling her shirt back into place. I didn't know what they'd been up to in the car but I could take a pretty good guess.  
Oklahoma was almost quivering with excitement at the sight of the two of them.  
"Look what we got!" he said, as though he'd just unwrapped a present.  
DeMarco looked me up and down approvingly.  
"This one," he said, "this one caused me a lot of trouble. And he's very fond of her. Very, very fond of her. Just not fond enough of her to make her his queen, fortunately for me."  
I bristled, and he bent down to smile at me.  
"Magdalena Maria Kennick," he said.  
"David DeMarco," I answered feebly.  
"Did you feed?" DeMarco asked the king sharply, taking in my weakened state.  
"She was so good," Oklahoma whined. "But I didn't give her my blood. Give her yours and she'll be fine in no time."  
DeMarco sighed in a martyred fashion. "Fine," he said. "Whatever. You've fulfilled your part of the agreement, Oklahoma. You have my thanks and your debt is paid. We'll leave your territory now."  
He looked around. "You only have four?" he asked, nodding at Oklahoma's vampires.  
"My humans are patrolling the parameter," Oklahoma said defensively. "I take security seriously, David."  
DeMarco threw up his hands. "Sure," he said, "Safety first. Come on, Miss Kennick. Let's get you out of here."

"My family will hear about this," I mumbled. "Eric will have your fangs."  
"I doubt it," DeMarco said. He unhooked me from the fingers of the man in black and steered me towards his car, Oklahoma scampering along beside us, opening the car door. Marie got in, pulling her legs in neatly, her face turned upwards to stare at her king.  
DeMarco paused.  
"Don't misunderstand your situation, Miss Kennick. You are mine, now. And I intend to fuck every single one of your orifices and then feed on you till you are dry. I intend for it to take several days, don't get me wrong. Then, if you don't have the good manners to die yourself, I'm going to leave you starve or parch, whichever comes first."  
"Why are you telling her this?" Oklahoma cried. "She'll just freak – look at her."  
I was twisting, writhing, beneath his tight grip. Deadly afraid? That's what I was. But the king of Texas didn't even glance at me.  
"Because he'll feel her fear," he said in a low voice to Oklahoma. "It'll drive him crazy. This – this is nothing compared to what she's going to project when I get started."  
My breath was coming in short, sharp gasps and there was a rushing sound in my ears, like the sea. All I could see was Marie's smirking face, framed by the darkness of inside the car.  
DeMarco patted the other man's shoulder.  
"Be off, old friend," he said. "Like I said, your debt is paid. We're even."

He clicked his fingers and one of his lackeys came forward. Like Oklahoma's, the Texan guards were in black, but their uniforms looked more professional – tight fitting black pants and thin ribbed sweaters that showed their muscles, each armed with a large rifle. The king's man I recognised as well, it was Philip Bowden, his 'adjutant', the one that had taken Eric away that night in Shreveport, many moons ago.  
"Hey there," he said in a friendly way. "You're going to ride with me, missy. His majesty will want some peace and quiet on the way to the airport."  
"Fuck you, you fucking bastard," I began, directing my diatribe at DeMarco. "Fuck you, you – " and as I was led away, I directed every filthy slur I could think of at his departing head. Bowden laughed merrily and pushed me into the back of a second car. He pushed in beside me, still laughing, and the driver started the car.

DeMarco's car pulled out, driving past the king of Oklahoma, who was waving as though he were at a tickertape parade. His vampires waved half-heartedly; one looked a little bashful, as though embarrassed by his king's almost childlike enthusiasm. I leaned my head against the cold glass and tried to focus my thoughts on Eric, send him some kind of message, some kind of distress signal. The car bumped up along the road and turned onto the interstate. I shut my eyes in despair.  
"Hey," Bowden said suddenly, "what's that? And how come there are two of you? Did you change cars?"  
My eyes shot open.  
It didn't make sense: there was something large draped across the driver and the man in the passenger seat. I tried to focus in the darkness of the car.  
"Now," a voice said and something exploded, blasting blood all over the inside of the car. I shrieked and Bowden yelled. The car drove on, unerringly, not even swaying an inch as all hell broke out inside.  
"Now," said the voice again and a long arm leaned back and thumped Bowden in the chest.  
He, too, exploded, covering me from head to foot in sticky, cold blood. I couldn't scream; my face was covered in his entrails, opening my mouth would make me swallow what was left of Philip Bowden.  
"Hello, Majesty," said a familiar voice and Hræfn turned around in the seat. He grinned almost from almost ear to ear, his eyes glistening black in his white face. "Sorry about that. We had to keep the driver silvered till we set off – couldn't kill him before, nothing gives the game away like blood on the upholstery, right?"  
I stared at him, wild-eyed, then Gunnar took his eyes off the road for the first time and turned to look at me. His mane of hair had been shoved under one of the black caps that DeMarco's men wore. Crazy hair gone, he looked almost respectable.  
"You okay, Majesty? I hope you don't mind us intervening, but to be honest, I really didn't like the sound of DeMarco's plans for you. And who uses the word 'orifice' in front of a lady?"  
He dipped his head, laughing at me from beneath the locks of hair that nearly hung into his eyes.  
I wiped my lips on the sleeve of my top, scrubbing my mouth free.  
"Are you taking me back to Eric?" I wanted to know. "Whatever Oklahoma paid you, he'll double. I promise you, he'll double it."  
"Yeah, see, I don't want Northman's money," Hræfn said, suddenly serious. "I want you."  
"You can't have me," I said pertly.  
"I can," he said. "If I heard correctly, you're not his wife, just his human. So I've tasted you and I claim you. Simple. You're mine now."  
"That's not how it works," I said. "The Charter – "  
"I piss on the Charter," Hræfn said icily. "Northman and I go back far enough to know how this really works. He didn't look after you and I picked you up. I claim you, you're mine. End of story."  
I drew a breath to answer him back but he turned to me, his voice light again, and said, "But first we've got to get away from these buffoons, then I'm going to get you all cleaned up, Majesty. Oh, wait, according to that shit DeMarco, you're not a Queen, yeah?"  
He considered it. "So what will I call you then?"  
I remained stonily silent, wiping blood from my cheeks and neck.  
"Magdalena," he said, letting the word roll off his tongue, teasing the four syllables out like a song.  
 _Mag – da – le – na.  
_ "Anything but that," I snapped.  
He laughed. "Magdalena it is then," he said and turned to talk to Gunnar in their Old English. I picked up a scrap of Philip Bowden's shirt and used it to wipe my face.

xxx

 _Hello readers – I'll have to take a break for a couple of weeks, so don't be surprised if this goes quiet for a bit. I'll be back and the story will continue. Are you enjoying what you read? Then leave a comment or simply say hello ..._


	17. Chapter 17

"... And they just put you through?" James Kennick said incredulously. "Well, that beats all. Although, in fairness, no one ever rings me anyway, so your one on the desk probably thought it had to be a real emergency. What can I help you with, Northman?"  
Maggie's uncle's voice rang out through the phone's speakers. He had the same accent as she did, but his was stronger and it took Eric a minute or two to tune into how he spoke. Pam seemed to be having the same problem: she leaned in close with a frown on her face.  
"Maggie has been taken and I need your help to find her."  
He waited for a reaction but there was just silence. He took it to mean that Maggie's uncle was probably reeling in shock.  
"Well – " Kennick said. "Well, now."  
He seemed incapable of saying more.  
"She's been taken and the only thing we know is that the vampires' names are Raven and Gunnar. She managed to phone my progeny and tell us that they are English and that she's currently in Arkansas – "  
Eric held the phone away from his ear as the archivist found his voice and began to pepper him with angry questions.  
"Yes, it has been made official and a search warrant has been issued, yes. No, I haven't told her parents – listen, Mr Kennick, I have literally just gotten off the phone with your Empress," he said with more patience than he felt.  
"And did she tell you to phone me?" Kennick asked, a touch anxiously.  
Eric hesitated. "No," he admitted. "She said I would have to go through official channels and I don't have time."  
"That's that, then," said Kennick shortly.  
"No," the vampire cut in. "Listen, I'm asking you, as her uncle, to help me, as her husband."  
"You're not her husband," the other man said sourly. "You haven't made an honest woman of her yet."  
Pamela rolled her eyes and stuck up her middle finger at the phone on the desk.  
"Not for want of trying," Eric snapped in return.  
"She's always had good instincts, our Maggie," Kennick replied archly.  
Eric's patience was as thin as paper.  
"Are you going to help me or not?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.  
"What choice do I have?" Kennick said wearily. "Though what the Empress will do when she finds out is another matter."  
Eric heard the clicking of the keyboard.  
"There are no living vampires by the name of Raven, either first or family name," the archivist said after a couple of minutes.  
"But you did have vampires by the name of Raven in the Book of the Undead?" Eric probed. "And are you sure they're all dead?"  
"Last one was a vampire named Raven Howarth was killed in 1947 by Tomas Ardelean. If it was Ardelean who staked him, then he's definitely dead. Ardelean knows his way around a stake, let me tell you."  
"What now?"  
"It'll take a while to run through the closest derivatives and variations – I'll have to look up variations of the name in other languages, starting with English of all periods and then the Celtic languages. After that, we'll go on to related variations."  
"What does that mean?" Eric asked, as Pam turned to him with a puzzled look on her face.  
"Well, most vampires don't tend to be very exciting in their name choices, now, do they, Eric Magnusson?"  
Eric grimaced. It was Kennick's way of telling him that he had read the Northman's file. He'd probably read all the information available on his maker and his progeny as well.  
" If he calls himself Raven now, it might have to do with his colouring – so he could have originally used the name Black. Or Dunne. Or Duff. All of them are names from the British Isles that mean dark or dark-complexioned – and they're just the most obvious. There are more, a lot more, not to mention a dozen more first names, to boot. And, of course, that's assuming that he is actually British and not putting on an accent like yourself."  
"So this could take – what? Days?" Eric said through gritted teeth.  
"Probably," Kennick said sadly. "Though we might be able to narrow it down by linking him up to any vampires called Gunnar – there are a few in the database right now."  
"Get to it," the vampire said sharply and Pam rapped his hand. "Please," he added, and she nodded in satisfaction.

Eric hung up the phone and they looked at one another.  
"I'm going to the place she called from – what was is? Whoosher?"  
"Wooster," Pam said.  
He stood up, straightening his shirt, but his progeny laid a hand on his arm before he could make a move.  
"Eric," she said, "you know this is a wild goose chase. Those vampires have long left Arkansas, leaving a trail of glamoured hillbillies behind them. Our best bet is to return to New Orleans and wait till the Authority or James Kennick gets back to us. If one of the other monarchs took her, they will be in contact soon enough with their demands."  
He stared straight ahead, thinking.  
"And Eric," Pam added softly, "you might have to start thinking about the possibility that you won't get her back alive. Anyone who wants to hurt you will strike where it hurts most and they won't hesitate to kill your human."  
She grabbed his chin and pulled his face around so they were eye to eye.  
"I told you not to get too fond of her," she said.

Roughly, Eric brushed her hand away.  
"Quiet, woman – " he began but stopped when he heard a timid rap on the door. It opened a crack and a shock of blond hair peeped around the door.  
"My oh my," said Ginger and her face lit up in delight before she managed to control her emotions. Unasked, she entered the office and stood in the middle of the floor, one hand on her hip, tapping the floor with the toe of her high-heel shoes.  
"Wudn't no one gonna tell me that y'all were back?" she demanded. "No word from any of y'all and then you show up here and you don't even tell me?"  
Her voice rose, approaching an indignant shriek.  
"Ginger," Eric said wearily.  
"Don't you _Ginger_ me, sunshine," she said. "You know what I have to put up with? That guy you made manager? Fucktard, that's what he is. And _you_ ," she said, wheeling around to Pam, "you said you were going to get organise a rota of sexy vampires in here. Tour bus from Arcadia in here last week and you know what – apart from Evie behind the bar, there were no fucking vampires, just a bunch of horny fangbangers trying to get into them damn cages!"  
"I'll see to it," Pam said. "But we're kind of in the middle of something – "  
"Not much of a vampire bar without any vampires in it," she grumbled, undeterred. "When we do get visitors, they don't stay long 'cause there ain't none of their kind around."  
"What visitors?" said Eric quickly, his ears perking up. Ginger looked at him and a sly smile broke across her face.  
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she taunted. "Handsome ones. Real _handsome_ vampires."  
"Who were they, Ginger?" he growled.  
She opened her mouth to answer but instead she stopped, momentarily perplexed.  
"She's been glamoured," Pam said grimly and stuck her head out the door.  
"Evie!" she cried and seconds later, their vampire barkeeper came in, bowing her head respectfully to Eric and placing herself as far from Ginger as she could.  
"Who are the vampire visitors that glamoured Ginger?" Pam asked.  
The young vampire shrugged.  
"Didn't recognise them," she said. "Dark-haired one, a guy, with an accent. Like, British, I think? And a woman, kind of petite. The third one was – weird. He had, like, this scraggy grey hair and he looked old, you know: human old. He didn't make eye contact with anyone, in fact he was the one who made them leave."  
Eric asked, "What kind of accent did the grey-haired one have?"  
"He didn't speak," she said.  
"But you said he made them leave?"  
"Yeah, he used gestures, like a sign language."  
"So he couldn't speak," Eric clarified.  
Evie shrugged. "I guess," she said. "And you asked about their names – the woman was called Marie, I think. Didn't hear the grey-haired one's name but I heard the dark-haired one introduce himself to Ginger as Corbyn."  
"See?" Ginger said triumphantly, then slightly less sure, "Did he really?"  
"Before he took you off to the restroom for a snack," Evie smirked.

Pam caught Eric's eye.  
"Are you absolutely sure that was his name?" she said. "Sure you didn't hear something else?"  
"Nope," Evie said. "Pretty sure 'cause there's this NPC in World of Warcraft called Corbyn and I remembered its name."  
Eric and Pam stared at her. "Was that English?" Eric said and she visibly bit back a sigh.  
"Like, a little character in _World of Warcraft_. The game? The _computer_ game?" she said to their blank faces. "Maybe one of the best-known games in the entire world? Jeez," she said in despair.  
"Irrelevant," Pam snapped. "So you're certain he went by Corbyn because that's the name of one of your space invaders?"  
Evie pinched the bridge of her nose, as though fending off a headache. "Yes," she said. "A space invader. Sure. Whatever."  
Eric nodded at her in dismissal and she turned to leave.  
"What kind of creature is this Corbyn in your computer game?" he asked on a hunch.  
"A raven," she replied and Pam's face broke into a wide grin that reflected the smile on his own. 


	18. Chapter 18

We hurtled down the road, just under the speed limit. Hræfn and Gunnar conducted an urgent conversation in their English – at least, Hræfn did the talking and Gunnar communicated with guttural noises that seemed coherent enough to his friend.  
"Where are we going?" I yelled. There was no reason to yell, but I feel a bit shouty – hardly surprising, given the circumstances. I was sticky from head to foot, I didn't dare move for fear of causing a rivulet of Bowden's blood to trickle into the few remaining places that were relatively clean.  
Hræfn twisted around. Like me, he was bloodied, but unlike me, he was merely smeared, not dripping.  
"Flight or fight, Magdalena?" he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here as fast as we can, Gunnar wants to keep going till they discover we're not directly behind them any more, and when they come looking for us, he thinks we should fight. You come from a family of serial stakers, he has great faith in your abilities."  
In the mirror Gunnar caught my eye and nodded encouragingly before returning his eyes to the road.  
"So... fight or flight?" the dark vampire demanded.  
"Eh ... I... I don't know," I said, overwhelmed. "How am I supposed to decide? Either way, we're screwed."  
"No, one way we're less screwed, we're just trying to decide which one. Fight or flight?"

 _For fuck's sake,_ I thought, vexed. I hadn't wanted to any part of this scenario and now I was being called upon to weigh in on the escape plan? I glared at Hræfn and felt Philip Bowden trickle down my cleavage. I racked my brains, trying to figure out what to do.  
"Neither," I said finally. "Neither fight nor flight."  
Hræfn grinned at me, nodding admiringly. "A third option. Interesting – eh, Gunnar?"  
Gunnar grunted.  
"Well, it's just that they are the usual two options, right? So DeMarco – when he discovers that his second car is not just caught up in traffic behind him but is actually gone – will assume we're fleeing or we're standing our ground somewhere, preparing for a fight."  
Gunnar rolled his eyes in an _isn't-that-obvious?_ way and I continued quickly before what I said began to sound stupid to even my own ears. "So we do nothing. We don't run, we don't fight, we just withdraw. Hide. Like, in plain sight. In the first motel or hotel we passed when we left that clearing. He'll assume I'd never be stupid enough or brazen enough to take a room 500 yards away from where he last saw me."

Hræfn laughed. He was one of the jolliest vampires I'd ever met, with a propensity to laugh in even the direst of circumstances.  
"I like it!" he said. "I like it a lot. Turn around, Gunnar, and go back to whatever shithole motel we passed along the way."  
Gunnar growled, a real growl like a dog, but checked his mirror and swung the car around 180 degrees, causing the cars behind us to pound their horns. He said something to Hræfn, a series of short, sharp noises.  
"What did he say?" I asked.  
"He said your idea is stupid," said Hræfn bluntly. "And it kind of is. But it's the least stupid of all three options, so we're going with it."  
I sighed and leaned back gingerly against the seat. I didn't care at that point where we were going, as long as it had a shower, soap and a lot of hot water.

Hræfn got us adjoining rooms, connected by a door whose key he immediately confiscated, along with the other keys in the locks. The motel was small and old-fashioned; the doors weren't closed with key cards or electronic locks: each door had a large key that hung from a larger keyring that bore the number of the room. The owner of the motel must have been in his 80s, so any need for glamouring was minimal: he couldn't see the men clearly enough to see that their black clothes were bloodied and I was simply locked in the car till they got the rooms.

Once inside, I charged into the bathroom, locked the door before Hræfn could take that key as well, and stripped as fast as I could. I ripped the tiny bar of soap out of its wrapper and stepped under the scalding water, scrubbing and rubbing every inch of my skin. It took two washes before my hair felt clean, then I lathered up the soap once more and washed it once again, for good measure. Then I stepped out of the shower and examined my clothing. With a sigh, I filled the sink with hot, soapy water and washed out my t-shirt and underwear by hand, then did the same with my jeans. I hung the damp clothes over my arm, wrapped myself in the largest of the towels on the sinktop counter, and opened the bathroom door.

Gunnar was lying flat, rigid, on the bed like a corpse; his eyes were open but his face was blank. He'd retreated into that vampiric 'down' state, like a computer in standby. When I cleared my throat, something flickered across his face and he turned to look at me, then looked away quickly when he saw I was only wearing a towel.  
"Where's Hræfn?" I asked timidly. Still not looking at me, he pointed at the adjoining room.  
"Do you think this place has a dryer?"  
Gunnar sighed and rolled off the bed. He held out his arms and I reluctantly put my wet clothes in them, covering my underwear with my t-shirt. As if that would help. He sloped off out of the room, turning the key in the lock twice. Not knowing what to do, I sat down on the end of the bed and turned on the TV.

I didn't look up when I heard the first polite _ahem_ but I had to look up when Hræfn cleared his throat with enough violence to dislodge any amount of phlegm, I looked up. And looked back at the TV again. He was leaning in the doorway with only a towel around his waist and the one he'd chosen was considerably smaller than mine. I felt a dull blush rise in my cheeks, so I pretended to be engrossed in a news report about the local squirrel population. But I couldn't unsee what I had seen. His skin was a dull tan; in life he'd spent a lot of time outdoors but, pale in death, the only traces of the sun were in the dun tint of his skin. His chest was covered in a smattering of dark hair that crossed his chest like a crucifix: across his breasts and down to where the towel began. He was shorter than Eric but not by much, a couple of inches perhaps, and he was tightly muscled in a way that made me wonder what he had done when he lived: something that involved a lot of hard, physical labour.

"Where's Gunnar?" he asked, sitting next to me on the edge of the bed. I scooted away, till I was perched at the corner, one foot bracing me against falling on the floor.  
"He's putting my clothes in a dryer somewhere," I muttered, my eyes fixed on the TV.  
There was no answer. I stared at the ads for decongestants and bowel softeners till I plucked up the courage to slyly glance at him. He was sitting on the bed, his torso twisted slightly to look at me, with a smile across his face.  
"Do you ever stop smirking?" I grumbled.  
But that just made him laugh.  
He reached over and I flinched, but he merely pulled my towel up at the back, taking care not to touch my skin.  
"You'll catch your death of cold," he said. He sounded serious.  
I said nothing. Dying of the sniffles was the least gruesome option I'd been offered in the past twenty-four hours.

"What do you see in Northman?" he continued in the same serious tone. "I mean, forgive me for asking, but what does a spectacular human like you see in that brute?"  
I turned to look at him, expecting to see his mocking smile, but he looked serious. A frown crossed his forehead and his brown eyes gave no indication that I was being teased.  
"A spectacular human being?" I said with a derisory snort.  
"You are," he said. "Your blood?" He kissed his fingertips. "You're attractive, you're smart. You're the progeny of a great house. If you're a Kennick, you have an excellent bloodline. So why did you choose to align yourself with that dickhead?"  
He sounded genuinely puzzled. Absent-mindedly, his hand scratched his naked collar bone and I looked away. His arm bore a smattering of dark freckles, like someone had sprinkled pepper on his skin.  
"None of your business," I said shortly.  
"I would claim you," Hræfn said earnestly. "If no official marriage has taken place with that Swedish prat, I would like to claim you. You will be mine and I shall be yours and we will travel the world. I shall you show wonders you cannot imagine."  
I pretended to think about it. "Hmmm," I said, mock-pensively. "Let me weigh up my options. On the one hand, I could be the Queen of Louisiana and live in my New Orleans palace, surrounded by servants. Or – and, my, does this sound tempting! – I could shack up with some weirdo vampire from God-knows-where and spend my life on the run from ... how many monarchs have you pissed off so far? Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Wowzers," I said sardonically. "Tough call, dude."  
Hræfn's smile fell from his face and he answered me coldly. "If my information is correct, you live as a virtual prisoner in a very real prison, Magdalena. You cannot move without being followed by your staff, you cannot move freely or even talk a walk outside. As I know him, Northman is a moody bastard, a control freak. Your relationship might be many things, but I know there is no warmth from him. I simply cannot see what you see in him."  
As he leaned back on his elbows on the bed, his body stretched and his muscles moved. I kept my eyes locked on his.  
"The only thing I can presume is that his major advantage is that he's ... proportional," he said, grin returning, and he glanced at his own crotch. My eyes followed his and then I looked away, blushing crossly. I opened my mouth to retort but the key turned in the door and Gunnar came in. He saw the two of us on the bed – me sitting primly, hot and flustered, and Hræfn draped across the candlewick cover, his towel slipping dangerously – and he gave a loud barking noise that made me jump, then turned on Hræfn, wagging a finger at him.

I used the opportunity to flee to the bathroom. Door locked, I sat on the toilet seat with my head in my hands and tried to sort out my thoughts. What did I see in Eric? Stupid English vampire was screwing with my head.  
What did I see in Eric?  
I tried to think of him, really think of him. I tried to imagine my hands on his cold face, the way his eyes lit up when he thought of some naughty prank to play on Pam. I remembered how it felt when we sat on the sofa, each of us at either end, with his long feet in my lap. He loved having his feet rubbed but was extremely ticklish at the same time – it was the thing that made me smile when I thought of him: watching him squirm on the thin line between pleasure and excruciation as I rubbed his feet, my finger tracing the scar his sister left with an arrow when he was a boy, stroking the soft skin on his instep, skin that was soft and unmarked, like a child's skin. And when I looked up, his eyes were usually screwed shut, blond hair falling into his eyes, as he tried not to laugh when I touched him, but unwilling to let me stop.

The thought made me warm inside. I realised I really, really wanted to see him again. More than anything else.  
I stood up, resolve renewed, and yanked my towel around me tightly. I would get out of there and head back to Louisiana by any means possible. Or escape and sit tight somewhere till Eric came for me. Either way, I would see him again. Soon.

I turned the key in the lock.  
 _So_ my brain said _you basically want to get back to him to give him a foot rub._  
I shuddered. It felt like I had Hræfn's voice in my head.  
 _Shut up, brain_ , I hissed. _Shut up._  
When I opened the door, Gunnar and Hræfn were standing in front of me, their faces earnest. Hræfn was still wearing a towel but he'd put on a t-shirt Gunnar must have got in the gift shop because it bore the name of the hotel and its telephone number.  
"Magdalena," Hræfn said, "I apologise for this, but this is a matter of necessity."  
Gunnar stepped forward and grabbed my two arms, twirling me quickly so he could lock them from behind.  
"Hey!" I shouted angrily. "Hey! Let me go!"  
Hræfn raised his arm to his lips. Perplexed, I followed the movement of his hand and what he intended to do only dawned on me when his fangs popped out. They were very long and very pointed.  
"The fact that it overlaps with my personal desires is just a convenient side effect," he said as he pierced his own wrist. Immediately, I clamped my lips shut but he just stepped forward and grabbed my nose, cutting off my air supply.  
"Terribly sorry, old bean," he said, smiling at me. He rested his forehead on mine, closing his eyes. Up close, I smelled the forest, the freshly-cut wood, from his skin. My lungs filled, strained – and I gasped. Quick as lighting, he pressed his bleeding wrist to my lips and traced them with his blood. I wriggled, spat, but knew it was hopeless. I had some of his blood inside me, I could taste it on my lips and in my mouth.

Gunnar released me slowly. I whirled around to look at him, but he hung his head and I immediately understood that he didn't like what had happened any more than I did. Hræfn, on the other hand, was watching me, his tongue flicking at his wrist to clean away the rest of the blood.  
"You fucker," I said quietly. "I'm going to get you for this."  
"I can't wait," he said. And winked.


	19. Chapter 19

"So what do we do now?" Hræfn said. "You hungry, Gunnar? You can have some if you want."  
By 'some', he meant me.  
Gunnar and I shook our heads in unison.  
"Fine," Hræfn said. "A round of True Blood for everyone, then. How about you, Magdalena? What can I get you, my petal?"  
His blood, his metallic blood, was still in my mouth. The thoughts of eating anything turned my stomach but I had plans to get the hell out of there and I needed my strength.  
"We passed a vending machine on the way up," he said. "Will I get you some candy bars or something?"  
"Yup," I said shortly, "sounds like a balanced meal."  
He rooted in his pocket for his wallet and checked if he had change. Gunnar took his out as well and they swapped notes and coins before Hræfn said, "Any requests?"  
"Chips," I said, not inclined to add a 'please'. "And something to drink. I want to wash this taste out of my mouth before I vomit."  
"Baby," Hræfn said merrily, "I feel a bit insulted."  
He leaned over to me and once again rested his cold forehead on mine, his eyes shut. Now that I had had his blood, I smelled him deeply, smelled the faint trace of human sweat, the smell of his skin. It was so overwhelming, I pulled back, and I could see that something similar had happened to him. Wide-eyed, he stared at me. Gunnar looked from him to me and back.  
"Carrier," Hræfn said. "That's what happens when you have a carrier. Now I understand the fuss."  
He shook his head in disbelief.  
"I'm looking forward to you," he said seriously. "To us."  
He smiled at me and something inside me responded instinctively. But, fighting the instinct of the blood bond, I kept my face neutral.  
"I'll be back in a few minutes," he said and turning to Gunnar said, "I might have to go the nearest petrol station for some True Blood, okay? Keep an eye on her."  
Gunnar nodded.

I sat in the armchair, still clad in my towel. Gunnar walked back and forth, running his hands through his mop of grey hair. His jaw moved constantly, as though he were talking silently, and as he passed I caught his smell, that rank, dirty smell that made me recoil.

After a minute or two, he stopped pacing and pulled a little black notebook from his back pocket. He pulled a stubby little pencil out of its spine, flipped open a page and began writing. Then he proffered the little book to me. To my surprise, the page was covered in exquisite copperplate handwriting, ornate and even, and difficult to read. I squinted and made out the words  
 _Hræfn should not be doing this. You need to leave.  
_ "I need to leave?" I repeated, hope suddenly dawning. "Of course I need to leave. But how? Are you going to help me?"  
He nodded.  
"But why?" I asked. "Why are you helping me?"  
He took back the notebook, paused, then wrote:  
 _Hræfn is a good man. This will be his undoing.  
_ The words gave me a chill.  
Gunnar wrote _, I will get your clothes. Get dressed and leave through the owner's garden. Nearest town about a mile east._  
"East?" I asked. Americans always gave directions in terms of the compass – two blocks north, four miles west, three towns over southeast – but I never had a clue which way was which. Left, right, straightahead were the limits of my directional skills. Gunnar pointed east and held a hand up to show that I should wait.

While he was gone, I waited by the window, anxious that Hræfn would return. As soon as I had my clothes, I slipped into the bathroom and pulled on my underwear, t-shirt and still damp jeans. My shoes squelched a bit when I put them on, but squishy footwear wasn't my priority at that moment. When I came out of the bathroom, Gunnar was waiting. He held out $70 in small notes and I took them, folding them and putting them into the pockets of my jeans.  
"Thank you," I said, looking him in the eye. His lined face looked grim. "I won't forget this," I said, "when the time comes."  
Because, knowing Eric, the time would come.  
Gunnar took out his notebook.  
 _Hræfn is a good man,_ he wrote again. _He would have loved you above all others. Don't forget that._  
I looked at him:  
"Go," he mouthed.  
I left.

I scampered through the little garden to the side of the motel, skirting the owners' private quarters, hoping I wouldn't set off any alarms, sprinklers or lights. I climbed over a little wall and found myself beside a small road, unlit by any kind of street lamps. I started walking in a direction I hoped was east, ducking into the scrubby bushes at the side of the road when I saw the headlights of a car. I half-walked, half-jogged, passing a sign that indicated that the nearest town, Carlton, was 1.5 miles away. Suddenly, I felt overcome with nausea, my heart started to pump so fast that I had to stop and bend over till the queasiness passed. What was wrong with me? I wondered. Hunger? Thirst? It could be either. Delayed shock, maybe. Then it hit me: I knew the feeling. It wasn't my feeling, it was something external that was rising from my gut like a wave of cold water. I was feeling Hræfn and he had probably just discovered I was gone.  
I broke into a run.

A few minutes later, I heard a car on the road behind me, and something clicked in me - I didn't just duck into the bushes, I scrambled right in, getting scratched by brambles and disturbing a couple of rats or mice going about their nocturnal business. I saw Hræfn's shadowy figure in the dark car that passed; he was alone, and in that quick second I saw that his face was like thunder. I worried for Gunnar.

 _Not time to worry about anyone but yourself,_ I chided. I crawled out of the hedgerow and keep going till I saw the distant lights of a car and knew it was Hræfn returning. Back into the bushes I went. This time he drove slowly, peering out of the window of the car. I breathed deeply, closing my eyes and thinking of things far, far from where I was at that moment. Walking on Howth beach when I lived in Dublin. Sitting in the sunshine in St Stephen's Green, drinking a coffee and reading my book. Walking with my grandfather in the Wicklow mountains. I missed Ireland. None of this kind of shit ever happened in Ireland.

The car passed. I waited till I saw the lights disappear and walked into town, banging on the window of the gas station to get the startled clerk to call the sheriff.

xx

I rang Eric while I was waiting for the sheriff to arrive. He alternated between murmuring Swedish endearments and barking English orders – " _Älskling_ _, mitt hjärta_ , hide, get silver, find a stake. Don't move. Get to the nearest airport. Hear me, Magdalena?"  
I could hear the relief in his voice.  
Bert, the man behind the counter, told me Fort Smith had the nearest airport and Eric told me to get there; he'd organise some kind of flight back to Shreveport.  
"Just get there, _min skatt,_ " he said. "As quickly as you can. I'll take care of everything else."

I persuaded Sheriff Bloom that I had really been abducted and he phoned the Louisiana police department to confirm that I had, actually, been registered as a missing person. Then his attitude changed towards me: I was no longer some random weirdo (crazed opioid addict? Illegal border crosser? Left-wing foreigner?) who had called him out of his warm bed at 4 o'clock in the morning. No, I was a _bona fide_ damsel in distress, waiting for a taxi cab to take me back over the border to Fort Smith in Arkansas  
"They say you're some kind of Queen," he said, leaning against the counter of the gas station. He, Bert-behind-the-counter and I all had a cup of coffee. It was burnt and bitter, and it took five creamers to make it drinkable. It was the best coffee I had ever had.  
"Yeah," I said. "Not really. My ... eh... my partner is the vampire king of Louisiana."  
"You a fangbanger?" the sheriff said. "This some kind of perverted vampire thing?"  
His eyes nearly popped. He turned to Bert, who was equally taken aback.  
"Well," the sheriff said, putting his coffee down. "Well, that 's just dandy."  
He rubbed his ample stomach and picked up his hat.  
"Here's your taxi cab," he said, as the car lights approached. "Don't you tell Marianne that you some kind of fangbanger," he growled. "Bad enough she had to get out of bed in the middle of the night, but she won't drive you nowhere if she finds out you're up to all manner of perversions with them creatures of the devil. Shame on you, missy. Shame on you for turning from Jesus and endangering your immortal soul."  
Mutely, I put down my coffee cup and went outside, my head bowed. In the rarefied environment of my vampire palace, I had seldom encountered this amount of hostility, this amount of concern for my place in the afterlife. I felt tainted by his repugnance.

The car door opened and a woman as round as the sheriff greeted me with, "I heard you in trouble, honey. Where can I get you to?"  
I took note of the badges on the dashboard that told me that Jesus saves, that God is watching, that The Lord hates fangs and decided to follow the sheriff's advice.  
"Fort Smith," I said. "As fast as you can. Don't stop for anyone. I can pay you $70 now and a cheque for $250 will follow when I get back home."  
Marianne's face broke into a wide smile. "Hop in," she said.

xx

I arrived in New Orleans after dawn. When I entered the foyer, the day staff hurried forward. The day manager pulled me aside, checked me up and down, told me the police were waiting to take a statement and someone from the Vampire Council would record a statement to play for the authorities as soon as they woke after dark. I brushed him off.  
"Has Eric gone to ground?" I asked.  
"He waited as long as he could, Madam," the manager said. "He got the bleeds, but he wouldn't go down. Finally, Ms de Beaufort persuaded him to take his rest."  
"Tell the police that they can leave. I'll give a statement when I wake tonight. I want to go to the King."  
"Of course, Madam," the manager said. He smiled kindly. "We are all very relieved to have you back, Madam."  
"I'm relieved to be back," I said.  
I got the manager to fetch me a spare key (my keys – where were they? Where was my purse? My wallet? My mobile phone? All the things that had been separated from me when I was in Bon Temps) and hurried past the well-wishers, taking the stairs as quickly as I could. I let myself into our pitch dark apartment and made my way across the living room, careful not to trip over anything. In our bedroom, I saw Eric's dark form. I sat at the bottom of the bed and took one of his long feet in my hands, gently massaging im, rubbing the rough skin on the sole of his foot, tracing the bones of his ankle, his toes.  
"Magdalena?" he said, sitting up. He hit the bedside lamp and we both blinked in the sudden light.  
" _Älskling_ ," he said in a low voice. I grinned at him and stroked his ankles, my hands moving lightly to his knees. A trickle of blood came out of his ear as I slid up the bed beside him. He grabbed me roughly, pressing his face in my hair. I squeezed him back, smelling his scent – the salty sea, the underlying sweetness of apples, the sour smell of worry.

"I want to shower and change," I whispered. "Rest. I'll stay beside you. I'll tell you everything at dusk."  
Eric nodded and lay back down. He watched me cross the room, then closed his eyes. I paused at the door and looked at his face relaxing into his down state, something I never ceased to find fascinating. His body stiffened – and whoosh, he was gone. I showered quickly, pulled out fresh clothes and got into bed beside him. I stretched an arm across his large chest and pressed my nose against his face, my tongue stretching out to lick the blood that smeared his cheek. I felt his life's blood pulse through me and I squeezed him tight before turning around to finally get some sleep.

I tucked my hands under my cheek and closed my eyes, quickly drifting away. But something woke me. I sniffed the air, then my skin. From my hands I got the faint smell of freshly-hewn wood, of sunshine, of forest. I pressed my eyes closed and tried to sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

When I woke, Eric was busy.  
Stroking, caressing, licking... I looked down and saw a large mound under the blankets and it made me smile. I sank back against the pillows, my arms behind my head, my mind flying -  
\- until my stupid mind flew back down to earth and crash-landed into reality with a nasty bang.

"Eric," I said, peeking under the blanket, "we need to talk."  
"Later," he said.  
"No, really," I insisted. "We need to talk."  
"After," came his muffled reply.  
I sighed. I really wanted to let this continue but I knew a bad idea when I saw one – so I thrust a hand under the bedclothes and groped around till I had a fistful of hair and then pulled him up. His fangs were fully extended, his lips drawn back in a snarl. At moments like these, I wondered at his otherness. Still not used to it, I quietly said, "Please retract."  
He paused for a moment and his fangs shot back up.  
"Just tell me one thing," he said, kissing the palm of my hand. "Did a vampire take your blood?"  
"Yes," I said. "Yes, he did. I tried to fight it, I really did but I – "  
"I will find him and I will kill him. Don't worry about it," he said resolutely and started to slide downwards again.  
"No, wait – "  
"Were you hurt?" he demanded, looking up. His gaze went from my face to my hair and he moved back up so our faces were level.  
"No, well – no, not really, but Eric – "

He moved closer, tugging the elastic that held my hair back till it came loose. Annoyed, I brushed my unruly mane of hair away from my face, spitting out the hair that got caught in my mouth. He pulled me closer and buried his face in my hair.  
"Eric – " I began again but heard the click of his fangs coming down, and knew what he was after.  
"Fine," I said. "Fine, have some blood but we need to talk, Eric."  
Eric dug in and I winced under the pain of the skin breaking. He sucked for a couple of seconds, then his greedy nuzzling became slower. And stopped.  
He drew back, a frown across his forehead.  
"Do you have another vampire's blood?" he asked slowly.  
Finally!  
"Yes!" I cried. "Yes, that's what I've been trying to tell you. The dark vampire, the one who calls himself Hraefn, gave me his blood."  
Eric regarded me, his expression neutral.  
"And you could not resist?" he asked in a cool voice. "You could not refuse? You are another vampire's woman, after all.  
"Honestly? He didn't give a shit, Eric. And no, I couldn't resist. He held my nose."  
Eric continued to stare at me, then turned away.  
"I see," he said but I knew he didn't.

I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.  
"Really?" I snapped. "You think it was my fault?"  
"I didn't say it was your fault."  
"You're acting like it was my fault."  
"It's not your fault," he said in an even tone. "Although I suppose I'm just trying to imagine how you could have allowed it to happen."  
I gaped at him but he wouldn't meet my eyes. "You taste of him," he said, a note of disgust in his voice.

Outraged, I placed the sole of my foot against his hip and used all of my strength to push him away, across to the outer edge of our large bed.  
"Are you seriously fucking victim blaming?" I hissed. "Some psycho has me held down and wipes his blood on my mouth while holding my nose so I can't breathe? And it's my fault because I couldn't hold him off?"  
"You will dream of him," Eric said, not looking at me.  
"Do you think I'm looking forward to it?"  
He shrugged.  
"Fuck you," I said and rolled out of the bed without a backward glance. After all I'd been through, I was not in the mood for dealing with Eric's feelings.

I stomped into our living room, banged into the tiny kitchen and set about making myself some toast. I whacked the bread into the toaster and slammed the fridge door when I took the butter out. I knew he was standing in the doorway before I turned around but I ignored him, buttering my toast with unusual precision, bashing the tea bag in the mug with unusual violence.  
"I apologise," he said. "I'm sorry."  
I turned and looked away; he was naked, filling the entire doorframe with his bulk. Eric had never had any compunction about – well, literally letting it all hang out, but it made conversation with him quite distracting.  
"Are you really sorry?" I said, sipping my tea.  
"I know it's not your fault," he said. "I know this." He tapped his temple. "My head knows this. But I can't help the way I feel."  
"You can help the way you react," I answered.  
He sighed. "Your blood tastes of him."  
"Will it go away?" I asked.  
"Eventually. Until then, it will just be part ... of you."  
Eric looked down, tracing the pattern on the floor tiles with his toe.  
"I'm sorry, too, Eric," I said. "I didn't want any of this to happen."  
He shrugged.  
"It is what it is," he said and walked over to the fridge. He pulled out a bottle of True Blood and emptied into a glass. While I drank my tea, he drank his blood, both of us leaning against the kitchen countertop, each of us deep in our own thoughts.


	21. Chapter 21

Unfortunately it was Pam who found me crying. Not so much crying as weeping; sitting behind a large fern on the terrace behind the throne room, wiping my nose on my sleeve because I didn't have a tissue. I'd tried my best to cry silently, but she must have heard a muffled snuffle because I could hear her footsteps clack-clack unerringly over to where I'd hidden. Then there was a short pause while I covered my eyes and pretended to be invisible before the leafy plant was yanked back and Pam thrust her face into mine. I braced myself for some smart remark, but none came. Instead she pulled a lacy handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to me. I took it with a shaky smile and moved over to make some space on the ledge. She sat down beside me, wobbling on her high heels as she sank down.

"You did very well," she said and, awkwardly, placed an arm around my shoulders. Desperate for some comfort, I leaned my head on her shoulder. She patted my head with a half-hearted, "There, there."  
It had been a rather intense evening. My first appointment was with Eric's counsels, three grey, grim vampires who advised the throne of Louisiana on all matters legal. I was asked to sit opposite them in one of the smaller conference rooms, while Eric paced up and down behind me. They made me tell my story from the beginning, taking notes, their faces immobile. Their questions were direct; they cut any rambling on my part short, asking me curtly to be more specific, more exact. They took notes on Hraefn, Gunnar, Marie – nodding at each other when I described her. Then they asked me about the nature of my interaction with the male vampires. Who had fed on me? (I could hear Eric hiss behind me). Whose blood had I had? (He stopped pacing, out of the corner of my eye I saw him pretending to stare out the window.) Had I been ... excuse the indelicate question, ma'am ... had I been, ahem, raped?  
"No," was my whispered answer.  
I glanced over at Eric and he was studying me. I know he was trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth.  
"Forgive us, then, for posing this question, but you do understand that it is all a matter of protocol," one of them said, the only woman of the three. "Was there, eh, consensual sexual relations?"  
"No!" I said.  
Every vampire in the room stared at me, a kind of vampire lie detection test, and I did my best to stare back. At times like this, the stress of the situation triggers a sensory overload: I smelled Eric's seasalt skin, the smell of leather, of horse, from the female counsel. And one of the other vampires smelled of food, of onions and garlic. And when I breathed deep, as I was trying to calm myself down, I smelled the sunlight and forest of Hraefn's skin.  
It was too much; I felt ill.

But before I could excuse myself, Eric said, "That's enough. That's all you need."  
And his legal team was dismissed. They gathered their papers and left the room silently.  
"Are you okay?" he asked, his face a picture of concern.  
"Grand," I said sardonically. "Just fine."  
I automatically leaned against him, my head on his chest, the flat of my hand stroking his chest. Normally, he would've drawn me in closer, rubbed his nose in my hair, dipped down to brush his lips against my forehead. But not today. He gave me a quick squeeze and released me, patting my back. I opened my mouth to say something but the door opened and the counsels returned.  
"This would be easier if we could glamour her," the female counsel said.  
"She can't be glamoured," Eric said shortly. "Though you're welcome to try."  
"You're not welcome to try," I snapped. "Just tell me what to say."  
Because I knew how this went. This matter would be regulated internally by the Vampire Council and I would be coached for the police. So they drilled me: visiting friends, abducted by rogue vampire when I went for a walk in the garden. Held in a motel for two nights.  
"But I crossed two state lines," I said. "I was in two motels."  
"They'll be glamoured," the female counsel said. "A modified report will be filed at the case will be laid to rest. _Ad acta_ ," she added in Latin, to emphasise the point.

I shrugged. This was no longer my problem, I was merely a pawn in a larger game and I was being given a script to memorise. When the police arrived, I sat down with the female counsel – who still hadn't bothered to introduce herself – and with Officers Jimenez and O'Grady, who asked me to give them an account of what had happened. I stuck to the text and it was evident that the two officers did not believe a word. Officer Jimenez eyed me up and down, her face set in a grim sneer, but Officer O'Grady managed at least to keep his countenance neutral.  
"Was there any foul play? Rape? Fang rape? Gang rape? Torture? Forced ingestation of blood?" Jimenez rattled off.  
I shook my head. Denying everything, as I had been instructed.  
"In words, please, Ms Kennick," she snapped.  
"No, there wasn't."  
She looked at me coldly. "Any relations of the consensual kind?"  
"I don't see what this has to do with it – " the female counsel interrupted.  
"It helps us form a bigger picture," O'Grady said.  
"Our Queen Consort and the King of Louisiana have a very loving and devoted relationship," the counsel said in a low voice. "I find it is being undermined by this line of questioning and I am not entirely sure how it is relevant."

I stood up, dizzy.  
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't feel well, I need a glass of water."  
I walked over to the table where the refreshments were arranged and poured myself a glass with shaking hands. I heard a scuffle and when I turned around, the counsel had Jimenez in a chokehold, her collar pulled tight around her neck. She was glamouring O'Grady in a low voice, leaving him with a stunned look before she turned to his partner. In less than a minute, the two officers were sitting, docile, opposite her. She called me over and handed me a piece of paper with the official version of events written on it. I read it out and the two officers nodded. Then I signed it and handed it over to Officer O'Grady. He stood up and shook my hand.  
"We will do our best, ma'am," he said in a friendly tone. "But chances are this fellow is hundreds of miles away by now."  
"I know," I said, "but thank you, anyway."  
Officer Jimenez didn't give me her hand. The counsel had wiped her short-term memory but not her long-term hatred.  
"Ma'am," she said curtly and left with her partner.

"That part is settled," said the counsel, shuffling her papers. "Now we just need to find the men who took you and instigate proceedings against Texas."  
"And Ohio," I said, rubbing my neck where he'd bitten me.  
The counsel looked at me pityingly. "Of course," she said smoothly. "But you must bear in mind that feeding on another vampire's human is a minor crime compared to an assault on a monarch."  
"I am the Queen Consort," I reminded her.  
She paused her paper shuffling to look at me. "Are you, though?" she asked in fake puzzlement.  
I bit my lip and left the room, cutting through the store room behind the throne room, out through a side door and into the chilly night. I found a large potted fern and sat down on the ledge of the balustrade behind it, looking up at the stars and satellites, feeling a wave of helplessness and disorientation rise within me.

And that's where Pam found me, half an hour later.

"There, there," she said again and I felt her trying to wriggle out from underneath me, probably afraid I'd leave tear or snot stains on her Chanel.  
"Don't worry, Maggie," she said. "The Vampire Council will take care of it now. And if Eric plays his cards right, there might even be some of Texas's territory for him."  
She all but rubbed her hands in glee. The vampire kingdom of Texas was wealthy; the vampire kingdom of Louisiana was not.  
"Great," I said in a sniffly voice.  
"Were the police mean to you?" she asked, a teasing undertone to her voice. The closest I could expect in the way of pity from Pam was gentle mocking, as opposed to outright scorn.  
"It's Eric," I whispered. "One of the vampires forced his blood on me and now Eric has ..."  
I took a breath.  
"... rejected me."  
"Rejected you?"  
"He's all ... fraternal towards me," I said, finally.  
Pam studied me, her brow furrowed. "Hmm," she said. "Fraternal."  
She nodded her head thoughtfully.  
"Eric is very protective," she said. "Now that you're back, I think he fully realises how close he came to losing you. This is his human side. Luckily, we don't have to deal with it that often." She paused. "And he's very territorial, which is his vampire side. It stands to reason that he does not like the idea of another vampire sampling his human."  
"It wasn't my fault," I hissed.  
"I know," she said. "And he knows. It doesn't stop him being a jerk, though."  
She shrugged.  
"However, I do recall one occasion in the recent past in which Eric also had another vampire's human take his blood, against their will," she said insouciantly. "It bothered that vampire a heck of a lot as well."  
"Really?"  
"How do you think he managed to get that dumbass fairy waitress?" she asked. "She was all but betrothed to Compton but Eric managed to inveigle some blood into her system and that was the beginning of a long and really stupid Sookie Stackhouse drama."  
Pam rolled her eyes. "So, yeah, pot calling kettle black, et cetera, et cetera. Typically Eric: it's okay when he's doing it but he gets majorly pissed off when the tables are turned."

She stood up, held out a hand and pulled me to my feet. Taking the handkerchief off me, she wiped my face roughly and pinched my cheeks.  
"Look sharp," she said. "He'll get over it. Just give him a chance to tear that vampire into pieces and he'll feel so much better."  
Something clunked inside me and I realised that I really didn't relish the prospect of Eric tearing the dark-haired vampire limb from limb. I thought about telling Pam, then stopped.

She brushed down my clothes and said, "You know what I used to tell my girls at the whorehouse? Get out there and perform."  
She spun me around and smacked me smartly on the bottom.  
"Get back in there and perform," she said smartly, pointing at the throne room. "Eric will come round. In the meantime, stop moping around like a wet dishrag and be a fucking queen."  
"Okay," I said reluctantly and we walked towards the door.  
"Do you really think he'll tear the vampire who abducted me limb from limb?" I asked.  
Pam shot a glance at me – curious, cautious.  
"I know this for sure," she said. "And he will take great pleasure in doing so. Why?"  
"No reason," I said. "I was just wondering if it was hyperbole."  
"Nope. And he'll probably do it in public to set an example, too," Pam said firmly. She stopped and peered down into my face. "I know you've had this vampire's blood," she said, "but you need to detach yourself mentally from him as fast as you can. This is going to end ugly."  
I nodded firmly, murmuring, "Of course. No problem, sure."  
 _It'll be his undoing,_ I thought miserably, remembering Gunnar's words.


	22. Chapter 22

I was just getting ready for bed when Eric came in. He stood in the doorway, watching me take off my makeup.  
"Do you want to say something?" I asked finally.  
"I'm sorry," he said.  
I couldn't believe my ears. These were words not often used by Eric Northman.  
"You're _what_?"  
"Sorry," he repeated. "Pam reminded me of ... well, she pointed out that I should be less ..."  
He paused, ran his fingers through his hair. He looked a little helpless.  
"It's okay," I said, flinging the used cotton pads into the bin. "The last few days have been very confusing and disturbing for everyone."  
He stepped closer, leaning against the bathroom cabinet.  
"It's just that I was afraid something would happen to you, Magdalena," he said in a low voice. "I imagined the worst."  
"But I'm fine," I said. "A few pints of blood lighter, but nothing a good steak wouldn't fix."  
I smiled at him but he didn't smile back.  
"And you have his blood," Eric said, looking down at an imaginary spot on his jeans. He rubbed at it, not meeting my eyes.  
"Eric," I said firmly, "I had a couple of drops. Nothing compared to what I've had of your blood."  
"A couple of drops was all it took for us to be bonded," he pointed out, glancing up. "You taste of him."  
I stared him down. He looked tired; vampires didn't age, but Eric's pale skin was shadowed and there were dark rings under his eyes. It occurred to me that he probably hadn't rested much since I'd gone to Shreveport. I pictured him sitting at his desk during the day, in a shuttered room that probably felt like a prison, wiping trickles of day-blood from his nose and ears. Not able to do much, when he really needed to be out hunting, fighting and killing.

I walked out of the bathroom and he followed me into the kitchen. I took a sharp knife and an apple, cutting it quickly into slices. I ate them as quickly as I could. Eric watched me, frowning. I flung open a kitchen cupboard and took down a jar of honey. I pushed him gently aside so I could grab a spoon and then dipped it into the jar, sucking it as I opened cupboard after cupboard. Finally I found the jar of Nutella that Pamela had brought me back from her holiday in Rome – Italian Nutella tastes better than American Nutella, I swore, and she'd indulged my folly with a huge jar that I'd hidden for emergencies. I unscrewed the lid, tore off the foil and dipped my spoon in, eating the chocolate sauce straight from the jar.  
"What are you doing?" Eric asked.  
Licking the spoon, I grabbed another apple, cut off a chunk and dipped it in the chocolate spread and ate that, too.  
"What will my blood taste of?" I asked and watched as a grin spread across his face. He opened the fridge and took out a carton of raspberries that I put on my breakfast muesli.  
"I like these," he said, laughing, and I ate them, one by one. His eyes followed my fingers to my mouth.  
"Your lips are red." His voice was low, husky. "It looks like blood." He stretched out a hand: "Come on," he said.  
"Wait, wait," I said and dipped my fingers into the Nutella. "Just one last little bit – "  
"Is that all you want to suck?" he grinned as he kicked the bedroom door closed behind us.  
I shook my head and let him take off my shirt. I ran a hand over his chest and he shuddered in anticipation, bending his head to smell my skin.  
"What do I smell of?" I whispered.  
"Chocolate," he replied and pulled me down onto the bed.

"Look at me."  
I opened my eyes. In the half-light of the room, I focussed on Eric's face above me. He was close to orgasm, I felt all the muscles of his body stiffen, as though he were holding himself in check, and the pupils of his eyes were inky black.  
I looked at him and he moved inside me – pushing, withdrawing, pushing inside again. I felt my breath come in short gasps and I tried to look into his eyes, tried to meet his stare. He liked us to look at each other when we came, he liked it best to hold my gaze till he saw me come, then sink his fangs into my neck of the soft skin of the inside of my elbow. Normally nothing gave me more pleasure than to watch his face, to watch his vampire skin take on a pinky hue as he surrendered. He looked younger, less guarded. He looked _human_.

But tonight was different. When I closed my eyes, I saw dark hair, dark eyes. I tried to stare at Eric, worried that he would notice my attempts to slip away in my mind's eye, but he didn't. He was ardent, enthusiastic, making appreciative noises as he punctured my skin with his fangs. He didn't seem to notice that while my body was beneath him, my mind was straining to get away.  
"Look at me," he said again and I looked into his eyes, smiling automatically.  
"Is this good?" he whispered.  
"So good," I lied and I felt him stiffen again, then felt the iciness of his orgasm inside me. I gasped and he grinned, kissing my mouth as gently as he could with extended fangs. I closed my eyes reflexively and I smelled Hraefn's blood. I dug my nails into Eric's back and he moaned contentedly, crumpling onto the bed beside me, his long limbs entangled in mine.

I lay beside him, watched him as he shut down quickly – the sun had already started to rise; mixed in with my blood was a trickle from his ear. I went to the bathroom and showered, then returned to the bed - as I usually did – with a flannel cloth and a bowl of soapy water. I hated waking to see him with a mask of dried blood, so I usually washed his face and hands before I went to bed. He never gave any signal that he, in his deep vampire sleep, noticed what was happening and he never mentioned it when he woke. I gently washed his face, some drops off his neck and hands, then rinsed the flannel in the bowl. He never stirred. It was like washing a corpse – then I checked myself. That was exactly what it was. The thought suddenly, irrationally, chilled me. I was like a mortician, washing a body for burial.

I returned the bowl and cloth to the bathroom and slipped into bed beside Eric. He lay dead still in the darkness, one long hand across his chest, on his heart, as though he were swearing an oath. I couldn't avoid it any longer: I opened the bedside table and took out a card of sleeping pills I'd been prescribed by their vampire physician when I first started living with Eric. Originally, they were supposed to help regulate my sleeping pattern but I'd found the whole consort job so exhausting, I'd never really needed them. Now I popped two and took a sip of water from the glass beside my bed. I was afraid of what I would see when I closed my eyes, so I stared at the ceiling waiting for sleep to take me. The next thing I knew, Eric was shaking my shoulder, grinning down at me with his fangs extended.  
" _Hej hej_ ," he said, "It's not often I have to wake you, Maggie."  
"I guess I was really tired," I said and pulled myself out of the bed. I'd slept for nearly nine hours – black, dreamless, vampiric sleep – but I was exhausted. Bone weary.  
Eric pulled me into standing position.  
"Ready for a busy night?" he asked.  
"Sure," I said, lying again.


	23. Chapter 23

That night I received two strange phone calls.  
The first was from Sookie Stackhouse and it came at midnight on the dot, as though she'd been waiting beside her phone in Bon Temps, watching the clock in the hall, her small hands folded in her lap while one foot tapped impatiently on her grandmother's rag rug.  
"You all right?" was her greeting.  
"Yeah, I guess," I answered. Eric was in a meeting with his accountants, toting up the month's tributes and taxes from his vampire subjects while I was on my way to the restaurant to have my ... my dinner? My lunch? I had adapted to vampire sleep schedules but still found it hard to figure out what meal I was eating and when.  
"So what happened?" she asked, straight to the point. That's the way it was with Sookie. She was capable of Southern charm but she never bothered using it on me.

I told her the story, the factual version. She _uh-huh_ ed and _hmm_ ed in the right places.  
"Bet Eric's glad to get you back?" she said casually, carefully. I hated when she said things like that because it always seemed to me that her words were hiding something else. Maybe she was so used to hearing the dissonance between other people's thoughts and words that she'd forgotten that I wasn't privy to what was going on in her head. So I took the question at face value.  
"Yeah, he is," I said with a laugh, "And his lawyers are pleased to get me back because it makes their job easier and the staff are happy to get me back because they didn't fancy having to live with Angry Eric if something did happen to me ... But there are a few women here, though, who would have gladly offered him a shoulder to cry on if anything had happened to me."  
"Not just a shoulder," Sookie said and laughed as well.  
"Bitches," I said.  
"Yeah, bitches," she agreed and we laughed again.  
"So I guess Eric is on the warpath now?" she said. "Gearing up to kill the King of Texas with his own bare hands?"  
I snorted. "He wishes. It's a legal matter now. Apparently kidnapping a king's favourite blood bag is a far lesser crime than assaulting his spouse."  
"But you're his – his – "  
"Consort," I supplied helpfully. "We are, as my parents keep reminding me, living in sin. I am his glorified mistress. In vampire legal terms, I am only slightly more valuable than his Chesterfield sofa."  
"That sucks," Sookie said.  
It did suck. And the thing was, whenever I had made grumbling noises about how little respect I was being afforded and how little my human dignity was worth, both Pam and Eric stared at me with their best blank vampire expressions and said, "You're not married to the King. That was your decision. This is the consequence."  
And damn them if they hadn't warned me often enough that this was what would happen if I didn't make my liaison with Eric official. It made me want to scream.

"How are you? How's the baby? What's her name? Can you send me photos?" I asked eagerly, keen to change the subject.  
(Pamela had filled me in on the details _: baby girl, natural birth, mother and baby fine, yea long and so many pounds, blah blah blah._ Babies bored Pam to tears.)  
"Her name is Aimee," Sookie said. "It means _much loved_ – did you know that?"  
I heard her mobile phone beep and within seconds, my WhatsApp was flooded with baby pictures. I made admiring noises and Sookie happily told me about her sleeping and feeding and the contents of her diapers. Any apprehension she'd had about the baby before the birth seemed forgotten.  
"So she can't read minds then?" I joked.  
Sookie was silent. "Oh, she can," she answered grimly and cut that line of conversation off by saying, "I guess I'd better hang up and go to bed. Sure nice to hear your voice, Maggie. I've been wanting to thank you for protecting me – you know, for pushing the door closed on that guy. I know he would've taken me if you hadn't been there and I don't know if I would've been as brave as you were."  
This unexpected confession gave me the courage to ask a question that had been bugging me:  
"Say, Sookie, the first time Eric gave you his blood – is it true that he tricked you into doing it?"  
She exploded into an angry tirade, whispering her words down the phone in a hiss.  
"That motherfucker! That motherfucker pretended he was dying from a bullet wound so I would suck that damn thing out. He was ten kinds of sneaky when I first met him, Maggie - you have no idea what he was like."  
"Did it change how you felt about William Compton?" I asked, almost afraid to speak the name of the dead king.  
Silence.  
"It didn't change it," Sookie said in her measured way.  
 _That's good,_ I thought.  
"But it did affect it," she finished.  
I said nothing.  
"I can't hear your thoughts," she said finally, "But it sounds like that's what's happening with you and Eric."  
"Kind of," I admitted and I felt a weight slipping off my shoulders. Just admitting it was a relief.  
"You be careful, Maggie Kennick," she warned. "I've been there and it won't end well."

xx

The second weird call was from my Uncle James, archivist to Empress Moya in Dublin. He phoned me when I was outside in the courtyard, waiting for Eric to finish with his accountants. We had one last official duty before the end of the night, a meeting with the vampire sheriff of Area One, the area that encompassed Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but I was already tired and looking forward to a warm bed, a cold vampire and a good book on my Kindle.

My heart sank when I saw James's name on the screen of my phone. I'd already received two phone calls from my mother, who cried in relief and then scolded me thoroughly for what had happened. She also told me that I should marry Eric to prevent something like this happening again and, minutes later, told me to get away from him as soon as I could because he was only bad news and a rascal of the highest order.  
My mother tends to send mixed signals.

Uncle James, on the other hand, did not.  
"You still with that gobshite?" he asked. He had never pretended to like Eric; he, above anyone else, knew his _curriculum vitae_ inside out and he was not impressed.  
"Yup," I said.  
"You're lucky you got out of that with your life," he said shortly. "Your grandfather wants to stake him."  
That was nothing new.  
"When are you coming home?"  
"I don't know," I answered. "Did you just phone me to tell me how much you hate Eric?"  
"Hate him? I couldn't be arsed about him, one way or another, but I am concerned for you."  
"Thank you," I said softly, because I knew he meant it.  
"Anyways," he continued briskly, in case either of us was carried away by that tender moment, "I found that fella that abducted you."  
"You did?" I cried. "Seriously?"  
"I'm deliberately telling you first," he said "and you can decide who to tell."  
"But why- ?"  
"Just wait," he said.

I heard paper rustling, the sound of a computer being woken out of sleep modus, the little Windows jingle sounding like a protest.  
"So, your man's name is Corbyn," he said. "Which means 'raven' – did you know that? That eejit of yours was the one who figured it out - wonders will never cease. After that I just had to run through a list of Corbans and Corbyns that we knew were living in the United States. Which turned up nothing, by the way."  
"Oh?"  
"Yes," James said and I heard him warming to the theme. He loved his archive, his spider's web of vampire lives and deaths. "So I explored the Corbans and Corbyns living in Europe – needless to say, there weren't many and they all lived in the British Isles. One was a woman, one was too young and the other one was deceased, a Howard Corban who was staked some time in the 1850s by Jan Van Helsaig. This Corban had been a mercenary for the Grand Council of Imperial Russia, who were trying to stage a coup to take control of European affairs. So Van Helsaig was dispatched to St Petersburg to take care of it, which he did. Dead end, right?"  
"Right?" I asked hesitantly.  
"Wrong," James said, a note of triumph in his voice. "Dead wrong, excuse the pun. Because it occurred to me that Howard Corban reminded me of a name I had heard previously..."  
He paused and I could almost hear a drumroll.  
"Raven Howarth!" he said. "Raven – Corban, Howard – Howarth. Get it?"  
I waited for a further explanation before I said, "Who?"  
"Raven Howarth! The vampire staked by Tomas Ardelean in 1947 – didn't Northman tell you what I'd found out so far? Andelean was only a young lad and Howarth was an infamous mercenary, just like Corban a hundred years previously, so it was quite a big deal in the day."  
He sounded a bit sad that his big punchline had fallen flat.  
"What have they got to do with each other, aside from their names sounding ... well, vaguely familiar?" I asked.  
"Here's the thing," he said, "The guy that was staked in 1850 was nesting with a tongueless vampire called Gunnar Harding. And Raven Howarth was nesting with – among others - his progeny, an American called Duncan Caldwell. A thin, dark-haired vampire with a hook nose."  
"Is he on file?" I asked. The _Book of the Dead_ had photos of a lot of vampires, so it was entirely possible that James was staring at his picture as he spoke.  
"Yes," James said. "Will I send you a photo?"  
"Please," I said, my heart leaping quickly, and picked up my phone when my WhatsApp beeped. I had a photo that James had taken of his screen. The vampire in the picture looked nothing like Hraefn and my heart settled.  
"He looks _completely_ different," I said firmly.  
"Yes, but Maggie," James said patiently, "if you were given instructions to stake a thin, dark-haired vampire with a prominent nose – don't you think he'd fit the bill?"

I understood what he was getting at. "You think this guy Raven let his nestmate get staked in his place?"  
"Soon after the staking, the nest was dissolved by Emperor Charles and this Duncan Caldwell moved to the New World. Of course, we all know how sloppy the Americans have been with their vampire tracking, but he was registered in the 1950s in Texas, sharing a nest with a vampire called Gunnar Harding. After that, nothing is heard of him ever again."  
"Who else was in that nest?" I asked. I had an idea – an inkling – what James was getting at.  
"Four vampires, three female. One male called Raphael Neven."  
"Rafe!" I said. "The King of Texas called him Rafe. I thought it was short for Hraefn, but it was Raphael."  
"Raphael Neven," James said, "Also known as Rafe Neven, turned in 1938 in San Diego, California."  
"You've found him," I cried. "Well done, James!"  
He cleared his throat. "I'm just doing my job," he said modestly.  
"And where is Rafe Neven now?" I asked eagerly.  
James lowered his voice. "That's why I'm telling you first," he said, "Not the Empress, not Northman. Rafe Neven is registered in Dublin."  
"Dublin?" I hissed. "Dublin, Ireland?"  
"No, Dublin, Georgia," James shot back sarcastically. "Of _course_ Dublin, Ireland. Where else?"  
"What's he doing in Dublin?"  
"Apparently he's a translator. He translates books from German and Dutch to English and he lives in Sandymount with his cat."  
"You are fucking _joking_ me," I said incredulously.  
"Nope."  
"What's he doing in the US, then, kidnapping women and force-feeding them his blood?"  
"Beats me," James said. "Once a mercenary, always a mercenary, I suppose."

I felt like I was reeling in shock. The man who kidnapped me lived twenty minutes from my former home in Dublin. I might have driven by his house. I might have passed him on the street, I might have sat behind him at the cinema. Professional mercenary and translator of Germanic literature.

"Can we send around someone to his house? Take him in for questioning?"  
"It would be best if you could positively identify him first," James said. "The problem is that he's at some conference in Düsseldorf till the end of next week."  
"After that?"  
"After that should be easy. He's at the launch of a new book he's translated on the 3rd of next month at the Goethe Institute in Dublin. I could just go along and take a snap of him."  
"Thank you, James!" I said. "I really mean it. You're a wizard! I can't believe you've found him."  
"Well, we'll know whether or not I've found him when I get a photo," he said sombrely, but I could tell his was proud of his sleuthing.  
I hung up and shook my head in disbelief. I googled Rafe Neven and found his bibliography. He'd translated more than a dozen Dutch and German novels into English, but Google produced no pictures or photos. I clutched my phone, thinking.  
Rafe Neven.  
Hraefn.

"Are you okay, Magdalena?" Eric said.  
I jumped.  
"Fine," I said automatically. "Just talking to my family on the phone."  
Not a lie. Just not specifying which member of my family.  
He sat down on one of the garden chairs opposite me.  
"I had an idea," he said, grinning.  
"Oh no," I replied and he laughed, pushing my chair with his long foot.  
"Why don't we go on holiday?" he asked. "Like, a proper holiday. Away from here – out of the United States."  
Away from Louisiana, the vampire palace-prison, the bowing and scraping, the curious eyes, the tiny apartment over the indoor tennis court.  
"Yes, please!" I said. "Take me away from here!"  
I leaped up and sat on Eric's knee, my arm hooked around his shoulder. I rested my head against his, rubbing my nose against his temple.  
"Where will we go?" I asked. "Asia? South America?"  
"I was thinking Sweden," he said. "I have a little farm on an island called Öland – Pam thinks it's a windy shithole but I think it's quite idyllic. Just you, me, the beach, a couple of horses ..."  
"Will I have to muck out these horses?" I teased. "I'm not picking up a pitchfork on my holidays, I'm warning you now."  
"No shovelling horseshit," Eric said. "I'll do it."  
"Sold!" I cried.  
Sweden sounded heavenly. And a part of me was dying to see where Eric came from, see where he had grown up. See where his people were from.

"We could stop over in Dublin," he said, tugging at the hem of my shirt. He wouldn't meet my eye. "You could visit your folks, I could pay homage to the Empress. Two birds, one stone."  
"Fine."  
The word popped out of my mouth but I couldn't recall forming it.  
"Really?" Eric said, astonished. "You're willing to make an official visit to the Empress of Europe and the Northern Territories as my consort? As a member of the Five Families?"  
"Fine."  
What the heck? Where did that come from?  
He planted a kiss on my mouth.  
"And ... a ceremony of symbiosis?" he asked, speaking quickly as though he needed to get the words out before I changed my mind. "It would make the process of prosecuting David DeMarco so much easier, Maggie, if you were my wife. We've seen how dangerous it is for you to – "  
"Fine, fine," I said. " _Fine_."  
"Are you sure?" he said, leaning his forehead against mine. "Absolutely sure?"  
I felt his blood moving against mine, the skin that touched my skin felt – irrationally – hot against my own. I was absolutely _not_ sure, but at the same time I was certain that it was the right thing to do. Clearly, I had inherited my mother's tendency to mixed signals.

I cupped his face in my hands.  
"A small ceremony," I said. "A really small one. Intimate. Tiny, even. Just my family, the Empress and your progeny. No press, no media campaigns. Please."  
I pushed his blond hair back and he grinned at me from ear to ear.  
"Jag svär," he said. "I swear. Pinkie promise."  
And he linked my little finger in his.


	24. Chapter 24

"I hate this city," Eric grumbled, standing off to one side. Waves of discontent emanated from his every pore.  
"I _love_ this city," I said joyfully. We were standing on Grafton Street, in the centre of Dublin, just after dark. Before me, a young man with a beard was belting out an Oasis song on his guitar, backed up by two girls who'd stopped on their way down the street to form an impromptu backing chorus. The misty rain shone in the glow of the streetlights, glazing their faces with a gentle shine.  
 _"And maybe –_ _"_ the young man bellowed  
" _Maybe!_ " the girls echoed.  
" _You're gonna be the one that saves me – "_  
" _Saves me!"_ they cooed.  
 _"And after all, you're my wonderwall!"_  
 _"Ooooh!"_ the girls shrieked tunelessly and doubled over in laughter.  
"Ah, come on now," the guitarist said good-naturedly. "Feck off, you harpies. I won't earn a penny with you two around."  
I laughed out loud and fished out ten euros from my pocket and threw it into his hat. He whistled appreciatively. I gave the two girls a tenner as well and told them their first drink was on me. They lurched off, giggling and pushing, holding the bank note aloft like a trophy.  
I loved Dublin.

The pedestrian area was brightened by the lights of the shop windows, bustling with people on their way to pubs, restaurants, the theatre. I linked my arm in Eric's and tugged him towards Trinity College, at the end of the street.  
"Why do you hate Dublin?" I asked.  
"Too many people," he muttered.  
That was true: Dublin bustled, _itched_ with people. But, still, I couldn't let it go.  
"Unlike New York, your favourite city, which is a veritable village?" I suggested.  
"Too many people singing," he supplied. "There's always singing."  
I snorted. "Ugh, please," I said. "That's such a cliché. All-singing, all-dancing Irishpeople. We're not leprechauns, you know. We don't spontaneously burst into song at every possible opportunity."  
He stood stock still and stared at me, one eyebrow raised sardonically. In the background I heard someone singing Eric Clapton's _Layla_ and, suddenly, a couple of guys appeared from a side street singing an off-key drunken rendition of _The Fields of Athenry_.  
"So. Much. Singing," he repeated wearily.  
"Mr Misery," I said.  
"And it rains," he added. "It rains far too much."  
I extended a hand beyond the umbrella. The drizzle fell so lightly I had to rub my fingers together to feel it. We were the only people on the street with an umbrella till we passed a group of Germans, huddled under their brollies like a flock of sheep. The Irish were bareheaded – bare-armed and bare-legged as well. There was a plethora of speckly Celtic skin on view, apparently immune to the elements.  
"Yerra," I said, "this barely counts as rain. Sure, it's just a nice, soft evening."  
He shook his head.  
"I know you've been speaking English since we arrived," he said, "but, collectively, the words just do _not_ make sense."

I laughed – I had to. We'd only been arrived the previous night and Eric had gone straight to his coffin in the Westbury Hotel's designated vampire suite. I'd slipped out of the posh hotel, directly in the centre of the city, and had run down to Trinity College. I'd grabbed a sandwich and a coffee from the busy kiosk and had sat down on the grass on the green, surrounded by the old college buildings. Exhausted and exhilarated, I'd sat between the students who were cramming for exams or chatting about their tutors. I was home. Home.

If I could have stayed there forever, I would have. Instead I tried to summon my courage for the days to come by treating myself to a visit of the Long Room, the narrow library room filled from floor to vaulted ceiling with old books. I breathed in the smell of leather, vellum, smelled the traces of skin and blood that covered the manuscripts, wandered through the exhibition for the Book of Kells, pausing at the huge reproductions of its illuminated pages. My archivist's heart soared: before I became entangled with these vampires, back when I had a husband, a house, a normal job, I worked for Ireland's national museum body; these precious things had been part of my daily job. Now I sat beside Eric on his throne, trying to figure out which state a vampire registered in Alabama with a business licence in Louisiana owed taxes to.  
My hand stroked the glass, tracing the one-thousand-year-old lines of a long-dead monk's quill and reluctantly I turned away, returning with heavy feet to our hotel and to my sleeping vampire.

And now we were on our way to the taxi stand to go to my grandparents' house for drinks, which was probably the real reason why Eric was so sulky, rain and singing notwithstanding. Our Ceremony of Symbiosis was to take place the following night, but first he had to court my parents and - so much worse – my grandparents. I'd had a cross, whispered argument with my mother on the phone at twilight while Eric was in the shower. I'd presumed we'd go along to my parents' house, sit on my mother's brand new suite of couches ("I was going to go for brown, but then I thought: feck it! You only live once! So I got the purple ones, which your father thinks are mad, but I think they're lovely. And purple is very on trend, that's what the lady in the shop said. On trend, imagine that!") but she announced that the event (Eric Northman Meets the Parents) was going to be held at my grandparents' house.  
"It's going to be _staged_ at my grandparents' house, you mean," I'd muttered sourly.

My grandparents lived in a two-storey Georgian townhouse that they'd inherited from my great-grandparents, Thomas Seán Kennick – who holds the record for most vampires slain in single-handed combat – and my great-grandmother, Mary Elisabeth van Helsaig, who was no slouch in the vampire-killing department herself. My great-grandparents' hand-bound books of vampire records sat on the bookshelves amid my grandmother's Maeve Binchey novels and you had to be careful if you went looking for a box of matches in their mahogany dresser. as a lot of them housed fangs of various sizes and vintages. If I had had to choose a more hostile place to host a drinks party for a visiting vampire, I would have been hard-pressed to find one. This was my family's way of telling Eric Northman who he was marrying into and what they thought of his skinny undead ass.

Naturally, Eric had not been impressed by the invitation to sip blood at my grandparents' house. In fact, I thought he might have paled at the news but he rallied and said, "Of course, yes. It would be a pleasure to meet your family before the ceremony. To assuage their fears."  
And I'd snorted again, knowing that the sight of the tall Viking ducking to avoid the chandelier in the hall, moving awkwardly around my grandmother's flower arrangements, would do anything but assuage their fears. But what could I do?

My mother answered the door.  
"Eric," she said warmly, not extending a hand or trying to hug him, as she normally does.  
She'd had her hair done and she was wearing a dress – I was almost childishly touched by her attempt to behave in a vampirely-appropriate way. My mother is the only one in our family who has no connection with the vampire world; she came from a farming family in the south of Ireland and had been introduced to the huge and complex subterranean culture of vampiredom when she married my father. She'd coped mostly by pretending it wasn't there and wasn't happening, preferring to tell people (and possibly believe) that my father worked for the civil service.  
"Mrs Kennick," he responded with equal warmth, placing two fingers on his left pulse as a gesture of respect. I felt another wave of relief wash over me.  
"No need for that," she said, waving a hand. "Call me Marie, we're practically family now."  
And she winked at me theatrically. I grinned.

Then my grandfather stood in the doorway and my grin fell.  
"So," he said. "You look better than the last time I saw you."  
Eric's fingers shot to his wrist.  
"Sir," he said, bowing.  
My grandfather rolled his eyes and gestured that we should enter the sitting room. My grandmother hugged me warmly and nodded at Eric, whose fingers once again pressed his wrist. He was nervous. No wonder. My parents and grandparents circled him, asking him about our flights, the weather in New Orleans, the weather in Dublin, the weather at this time of year in general, the weather at this time of year in Louisiana in general – I cut off this extended analysis of the weather by suggesting we have drinks.

"Of course," my grandmother said and fetched the tray. I took one and Eric's hand hesitated over the red drinks till my grandmother nodded at the one that contained the blood. As he took it, his wrist brushed the side of the tray and he hissed; it was silver. My grand-mother dead-eyed him with a _now-you-know-how-this-is-going-to-go,-fucker_ expression, before smiling sweetly and proffering a drink to my father.

And that, essentially, was how the evening proceeded. My grandparents pulled out all the stops to impress upon Eric how inadequate he was as a suitor for a Kennick: from the heavy old Waterford crystal wine glasses that were carved with the three circles of our family crest (representing the heart's blood of the first vampire staked by James Arthur Kennick way back when) to the display of stakes hung over the sideboard. Eric, to his credit, took it all in his stride, responding politely to my grandparents' sugar-coated hostility. My father, who sat opposite him, didn't say much: he just kept looking at him, slightly bewildered, as though he still weren't sure how this long-legged vampire had ended up with his daughter. And my mother, bless her, chatted blithely about the theatre and a documentary she'd seen about the Romanov family – had Eric known them? (he had) – pretending, pretending that the man on the couch trying to tuck his legs in and appear less large was not drinking blood, was not a thousand years old, was not undead. And I perched beside Eric on the couch, suddenly protective, ready to pounce if someone said the wrong thing. At one point I caught my grandmother's eye and she said, "Perhaps, Maggie, you might give me a hand warm up another blood for Mr Northman."  
"I'm fine," he said, raising his half-full glass.  
She ignored him and nodded sharply in the direction of the kitchen.  
I followed her glumly.

"In my day," she said, "someone from the family would've taken great pains to introduce you to a nice boy from one of the other Families. Or someone on the Empress's staff."  
"Those days are long gone, Gran," I said. "I married outside the Five Families."  
"And look how that turned out," she replied.  
"Dad married outside the Five Families," came my sharp retort, "and look how _that_ turned out."  
"But your mother was special," she said softly. "She has a bit of fay in her, which makes her so good-natured and so sweet. Nonetheless, you've seen how much of a strain it has been on her. Her entire life has revolved around not seeing what's in front of her nose."  
I shook my head, pouring Eric's blood into a cup. The Waterford Crystal had been made in an age long before microwaves. I punched in the number of seconds needed to warm it up and watch the cup turn slowly.  
"Tomas Ardelean has a lovely grandson, practising medicine in Bucharest. He is the Prince of the Balkans' most trusted human physician."  
"No," I said shortly.  
"How about the van Helsaigs? Lars van Helsaig is Sonja's cousin. He's very nice, just got divorced last year – married outside the family, don't you know. He'd only be your third cousin."  
"No," I snapped.  
"But a vampire, Maggie?" she pleaded. "A _vampire_? The Five Families don't symbiose with vampires."  
"Well, there's always a first time. Look at it as a big step for race relations."  
She sighed and took the cup out of the microwave, pouring its contents carefully into a fresh glass.  
"Are you sure this isn't a reaction to ... to what happened in America?" she asked, her head bowed over the table as she wiped up a drop of blood.  
My cheeks pinkened. I knew they knew; I was certain that the Empress had received a copy of the official vampire report; I knew she would have shown it to my uncle, who would have passed it to my father. They would have read between the lines of dry text and imagined the worst.  
"No," I said through dry lips.  
"You don't have to do this," she said.  
"I know I don't. But I want to."  
"Do you?" she said, looking up at me, her blue eyes bright and sharp.  
I swallowed.  
"I do," I said.  
She stared at me for a couple of minutes and I held her gaze. Then she looked away.  
"Take that into your Northman, then," she said, handing me the glass.  
I left the kitchen ahead of her, holding the glass in shaking hands.  
I was glad she couldn't see my face or hear my thumping heart.

xxx

 **I have the best readers – literally** ** _seconds_** **after I post, the stats spike and people start reading. I imagine you on your phone at work, at your laptop, on your tablet on the sofa or bed, reading along. Thank you for keeping up! But, as always, it would be nice to hear from you and hear what you think.**


	25. Chapter 25

Reluctantly I spent the day at the Vampire Council's headquarters in Dublin, having waved Eric goodbye at dawn when he left for our hotel suite. I kissed him deeply, and nuzzled his skin, rubbing my cheek against his. He had endured my family with admirable patience; a wave of affection came over me and I hugged him tight.  
"Thank you," I said simply and he nodded, then turned and left. I would've preferred to spend the day in the king-sized bed beside him, but the Empress had extended me an invitation to spend the day before the ceremony as her guest – pretending I was a virginal bride, ready to be handed over to my vampire husband, I guess. In any case, if an Empress kindly suggests that you spend the day in her residence, you'd better fetch your things. And fast. So I slept in the lumpy bed in one of the draughty guestrooms and got up at sundown to meet my father in the Great Hall. The Ceremony was to take place at 3 a.m., the witching hour, but before then I had to be coached for my role.

The Vampire Council's headquarters were squashed into a Georgian mansion in the centre of Dublin. Flanked on either side by identical tall, grand buildings that housed actuary offices, insurance companies or financial firms, it didn't look particularly spectacular or palatial. However, it had been the seat of the European emperor since the early 1800s, built on the site of the previous residence which had dated back to the Middle Ages. Which, in turn, had replaced the previous building, one that had burned down in the Dark Ages. Do you see where I'm heading here? It was a point of vampire pride, particularly in view of all of the mega-mansions built by the American states' kings and queens, that the European headquarters were old – creaky, labyrinthine and stuffed to the gills with ancient paintings, handwoven carpets, mediaeval tapestries and thousands upon thousands of books. The European vampires were defiantly enthusiastic about the residence, blatantly lying when they said they were not inconvenienced by the lack of parking or the haphazard layout of the state rooms. The building was like a child's Lego house, added to by a succession of architects, seemingly intent on stacking rooms on top of each other, joined by random narrow corridors, up and down little stairs.

I was standing in the Great Hall, which – compared to Queen Catherine's enormous ballroom – was rather poky, with a dais at one end for the Empress' throne and standing room for only a couple of hundred vampires. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in opulence. The curtains draped around the throne had been a present from Louis XIV, who'd hung identical curtains in one of his state rooms in Versailles. The walls were hung with portraits of famous vampires that had long since met the True Death, and beside the throne, in a glass cabinet, was the missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry, the one that showed William the Conqueror meeting Aodh the Red, the then vampire Emperor of the Western Isles. It smelled of beeswax and mothballs: the smell of my childhood. The smell of countless hours spent yawning at the back of the hall, listening to interminable vampire ceremonies.

Beside me, my father cleared his throat.  
"So, you know the drill, then?" he said.  
He had retired as personal secretary when Emperor Charles had died, now he only presided as Master of Ceremonies for more important vampire events. Our Ceremony of Symbiosis included, it seemed.  
"Yes," I said – I'd seen enough of them growing up – "You make a cut on my wrist and a cut on his, we smear our bloods together, our wrists are bound with a grey cloth, you say some Latin hocus-pocus, then we're untied and he licks my wrist clean and I lick his." I shuddered. "Disgusting. You know, in America you just go to city hall and sign a form."  
"Well, this is not America," he said. "Would you rather we still had the Roman ceremony?"  
I shuddered again. In the old days – the _good_ old days, the vampires said wistfully – a human/vampire Ceremony of Symbiosis concluded with sex, public sex, in front of the audience, who generally joined in. The Old Emperor had done away with that. Officially, at least.  
"No, no, it's fine," I said, "At least it'll be over quickly."  
"The whole thing is very quick," he said. "You've only been here a couple of days."  
"I think Eric is afraid I'll have second thoughts and bolt," I said, laughing. A dry laugh.  
"You're not planning to, are you?" he asked anxiously.  
"No. I'm good with it. This is what I want."  
I said it firmly. Just in case someone needed to be convinced.  
Like me, for example.

My father took my reply at face value and looked down at his little notebook, where he'd written a list of things to do.  
"Does he have his witness?"  
"Check," I said. Some Swedish vampire was flying in from Stockholm to stand as his best man.  
"And you have your witness," he said. "Check."  
The Empress was mine; it was a gigantic endorsement and Eric had been almost giddy with excitement when she'd declared she would stand for me. In terms of useful connections, he had catapulted past all of his American peers.  
"Knife for the bloodletting?"  
"Check."  
Eric had packed the dagger I had found the first evening I'd been in his house. I guessed it wasn't the first time it had been used for this purpose.  
"You've got your outfit and he has his?"  
"Check."  
Traditionally, the human wears white and the vampire black. I'd taken Pam off into New Orleans to find me a dress and we'd argued and bickered our way around three designer boutiques before I found a cream linen shift dress by Givenchy. It was almost startlingly simple: a beautifully tailored ankle-length robe, whose sleeves were covered in delicate cream embroidery. Even Pam, who had wanted something that revealed far more skin, begrudgingly admitted that it was very elegant. She'd insisted on buying for me as a gift, laughing gaily at its $4000 price tag.  
"I have to stay here and keep this place running," she'd said, "So this is my way of being part of the ceremony."

My father glanced up.  
"It's a white frock, I hope," he said. "It has to be white."  
"Technically it's not. It's cream, which is much the same thing."  
"Cream is not white," he said slowly.  
"But it's pretty much white," I said. "I mean, Eric is technically not wearing black either, it's more of anthracite. Or maybe charcoal, I'm not quite sure."  
"For the love of God and all things holy, Magdalena," he cried in despair, "what part of _black_ and _white_ did you two eejits not understand? White is white, not cream, not ivory, not buttermilk or whatever else you want to call it. And Northman needs to be wearing black. _Black!_ "  
"Does it really matter, Da?" I said. "It's just a private ceremony."  
"Of course it matters!" he exclaimed. "And it's not just a private ceremony. Nothing in this fecking place is private!"  
And to illustrate his point, he shouted, "Aidan!" and the door of the room opened instantly; the young guard who'd been waiting outside popped his head in.  
"Tell Silvia we have a ... what do you call it? A wardrobe crisis. Tell her we need white frocks, pronto."  
My father turned to me and pointed at the door.  
"Get yourself up those stairs and find a white dress. I don't care what kind of newfangled notions them American vampires have, over here we do white and black bound by grey. That's the way it is. You should know better, Maggie," he muttered, shaking his head.

Thoroughly reproached, I headed up the stairs to wait for Silvia, the Empress' human lady-in-waiting and the keeper of the wardrobe.

x x x

Silvia – a small, thin woman with a strong Dublin accent and a needle permanently threaded through the lapel of her jacket – arrived with another woman in tow, carrying an armful of garment bags. They made me put on my linen dress, then stood around me _tsk-tsk_ ing and shaking their heads.  
"It's not white, pet," Silvia said. In her accent, the final 't's were almost silent: _it's noh whigh, peh.  
_ "I thought it would do," I said, starting to feel myself break out into a sweat with stress. "It's Givenchy, it cost a fortune. Eric's progeny said it would do."  
"It's not white," she repeated. "It has to be white, like: snow white. Jill, give me the Victorian one."  
Jill handed over a voluminous white satin dress and I was ordered to strip to my underwear so it could be dropped gently over my head.  
Silvia _tsk-tsk_ ed again. "Your boobs are too big," she said accusingly. "We won't get that closed."  
"Sorry," I muttered.  
I was squeezed into another dress which they also couldn't close and swamped in an enormous robe that had been made for someone far more statuesque than I. Just as I was beginning to despair, Silvia unzipped a garment bag and pulled out a froth of lace. I hated it on sight.  
"I don't think – " I began as the dress was lowered.  
"Wait a moment," Silvia said, pulling it into place. I gasped as she pulled on the ribbons at the back and it enclosed my ribs like a vice, the boning in the corset poking my soft skin.  
"Lovely," she said. "That's Chantilly lace, you know."  
The dress had a high neck and sleeves so long they covered my hands. The corset of the dress was covered in intricate lace, which ran over the bodice and fell in vast folds around my feet. When I looked behind I saw a train of white lace pooled all over the floor like a melted snowman. I sighed. I looked like I'd been attacked by a table cloth – and the table cloth had won. It was the exact opposite of what I'd wanted to wear.

My face must have said it all, because Silvia patted my arm sympathetically.  
"It's only for twenty minutes, pet," she said. "Then you can take it off. But at this point, we don't have time to do major alterations. I'm just glad to find one that fits. Once the ceremony is over, you can put on your nice new dress, okay?"  
And she peered into my face to make sure I wouldn't cry, the way you would with a disappointed child.  
I nodded and bit my lip.

Jill, who had left the room to take a phone call, returned and said something in a low tone. Silvia's face brightened.  
"Apparently your man has a black suit with him, so he's good to go. The Empress will be up to see you in a little while – she's sending up one of her lads with a couple of head coverings for you in the meantime. You should have something to cover that hair, vampires believe red hair brings bad luck."  
I snorted.  
The two women tugged at the dress, stitching the train back on more firmly. I looked at myself glumly in the mirror. Eric would fall about the place laughing when he saw me. I turned away from the mirror and stared out the window, trying not to think about the grin that would cross his face when I stood by his side in my borrowed wedding dress.

There was a knock at the door.  
"Come in," Silvia said, a needle clenched between her lips. She paused for a second or two and called, "Well, well, well! Look at what the cat's dragged in! Long time, no see. Where have you been hiding, you rascal?"  
"I've been working," a male voice said. "Travelling. Revelling. Carousing. Gallivanting. The usual stuff."  
And his playful laugh filled the room.  
I froze. The room filled with the scent of woodland, of sunlight.  
"Is this the bride-to-be?" he said. "Lucky Northman."  
"Give me that," Silvia said and I heard a rustle of fabric. The bed – my bed – creaked. "Haven't you got anywhere better to be, Raphael?"  
"Nah," he said. "The Empress is running me ragged with stupid errands. I just popped in to tell her I was back in the country and she immediately made me go down into the vault to pick up a bunch of veils. What do I know about veils? No," he finished. "This is exactly where I want to be."  
His voice had a teasing note, an intimacy.  
With my heart in my mouth, I turned slowly, causing Silvia to squawk as she tried to sew a bit of torn lace at my hip.

Stretched across the bed, his head propped cheekily on his elbow, was the dark vampire.  
Hræfn.  
He winked at me, his tongue flickering to his upper lip, an insolent grin spreading across his face.  
Silvia stood up and draped a veil over my head, pulling it down to cover my face, while Jill adjusted it, sticking pins in my hair. Through my lace prison I saw the vampire lazily pull at his t-shirt to reveal the skin of his lower stomach. Still watching me, he scratched his skin, his long fingers moving slowly. Sound filled my head, the _whooshing_ sound you hear when you put a seashell to your ears, and my blood started _thump-thump-thump_ ing, an irregular pattern, out of kilter. His smell, the smell of forest and green leaves, rose in my nose and I pulled at the veil, trying to get it off, trying to breathe.  
"Jesus Christ," Silvia cried, "she's gone as white as a ghost!"  
I bent over, gasping as my ribs were cut into by the corset, watching the floor rise to meet me.

Quick as a flash, the vampire lifted me onto the bed, rolling me on my side so Silvia could loosen the stays. I dug my fingers into the mattress as the room swirled, trying to suppress my nausea.  
"Get her a glass of water," Hræfn said. "I'll stay with her."  
Silvia scurried out of the room.  
"Maybe a wet cloth for her forehead?" he said to Jill and she nodded, leaving us alone.  
"What are you doing here?" I whispered.  
"I live here," he answered. "So: did you miss me, sweetheart? Why did you leave me without saying goodbye?"

I slid off the bed, caught up in yards of lace, like a fish in a net.  
"Get out of here, now," I hissed. "I swear to God, you'll meet the True Death tonight if you don't get out of here this instant."  
"You must feel something for me," he said. "Or else you'd be screaming the place down."  
Instantly, I opened my mouth but he clamped a hand over it.  
"Okay, I get it," he said. "We clearly need to reconnect. No worries, babe."

He grabbed the train of the dress and ripped it, undoing Silvia's painstaking work. I gasped and he tried to use the opportunity to shove a bunch of fabric in my mouth. At least, he tried: I pummelled him, scratching and pushing him off, but he grabbed both my wrists in his, wrapping them tightly in a strip of lace, then whirled me around and gagged me. We were in the middle of this inelegant tussle when the door opened again, Silvia and Jill appeared transfixed on the threshold. He pushed me on to the bed, where I floundered underneath yards of fabric and watched as he grabbed the two women and yanked them into the room. Jill started shrieking; he grabbed her head and twisted her neck with a sickening _crack_. She crumpled to the floor. Silvia looked at me horror-struck; I'm sure my face looked much the same.

"Raphael," Silvia said, raising her hands, "don't do this, Raphael."  
"I won't kill you," he said, "I've always liked you, Sil."  
"You had to work so hard to earn the Empress's forgiveness," she wheedled, "please don't do anything stupid. You don't want to be exiled again."  
"Ah, you know what? I've decided I don't like Dublin that much any more," he said pensively. "It's gotten too expensive. Too much pollution. Irish people don't taste as good any more. Except this one."  
He pulled me up off the bed and kissed my hair. I elbowed him sharply but it only made him laugh.  
"She belongs to the King of Louisiana," Silvia said warningly. "You'd best not harm her."  
"I'm not going to harm her," he said scornfully. "I'm going to _rescue_ her."  
I tried to protest through my gag, pounding him with my bound hands but he just pushed me back on to the bed.  
"Hand over your mobile and hop into that wardrobe like a good woman," he said to Silvia in a casual tone. "Or else I'll wring your neck like your assistant's."  
Silvia made a sound like a sob, dug in her pocket and handed over her mobile phone. Looking at me fearfully, she climbed into the heavy antique wardrobe and Hræfn closed the doors, turning the key in the lock. He heaved the armoire in front of it, winking at me as he did so.

"There," he said in satisfaction. "Are you ready to leave, my darling?"  
 _No, no, no,_ I tried to say.  
"Do you want to walk or shall I carry you?"  
I dug in my heels defiantly, so he grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder like a fireman. Then smacked my lace-clad bottom appreciatively – not like a fireman.  
"So nice of you to wear a wedding dress for me," he said. "Sorry I had to rip it, but what ho. I'll be ripping much more of it before long, eh?"  
And with a hearty laugh he pushed open the door of the room and peeked out into the corridor.  
"Hold tight," he said and took off down the carpeted hall at a run.


	26. Chapter 26

"Oh, ye gods," Marcus Flavius Corvus said. "What did he do? Help me, boy."  
They scrabbled at the mound, using their bare hands to scoop up the dirt. It did not take long; she was barely covered, wrapped in a frayed linen cloth that Corvus could tear away easily. The woman within was not young; her children might have already grown and gone to war. When her face was exposed to the moonlight, her fangs popped out and she growled, trying to bite Corvus, even though the rest of her body was still in the earth. He smacked her lightly on the cheek.  
"Now, now," he said. "None of that. We're here to help you. Get her some fresh blood, boy. Try the fields – there might be shepherds, so look where the animals have gathered."  
The boy darted off, taking care to be quiet. They were far enough from the townsland not to be heard, but one never knew who might be out wandering at night. These Celtic people had all kinds of stories about the night folk, the spirits and the fae, but Corvus was more worried about the woman's family, her husband's clan, who would surely still be thirsty for blood.

"Who are you?" she croaked, her voice hoarse.  
"Marcus Flavius Corvus of Rome," he said, tapping his chest. "Of Rome when she was magnificent."  
He pulled back his sleeve and showed her the tattoo of the black bird. "I fought with Marcus Valerius Corvus, the raven general," he said. "That doesn't mean much to you now, but believe me, some day it will."  
He smiled at her and bared his fangs. She shrank back in fright, even though her own were still extended.  
"You are like him," she said. "The other one. He is from Rome, too."  
"We were brothers," Corvus said. "So that makes you my kin, too."  
"Were brothers?"  
Corvus' smile faded. "Your husband is a very brave man," he said. "He dared to trap a vampire and kill him, too. And not just any vampire: Quintus Antonius Pius. That's how much he loved you – he was prepared to meet his death to kill the vampire who took his wife."  
"Is he ... is he still alive?" she said, wriggling out from her shallow grave, the dirt tumbling from her torso as she sat up.  
"Pius? No. Your husband? Hanging on, it seems."  
"I must go to him," she said, bloody tear streaking her cheeks.  
"Woman," Corvus said, "You cannot go back to him now. He is no longer your clan, your kin. They will kill you, like they killed my brother, gagged with a silver coin and burnt to death. Is that what you want?"  
She hesitated.  
"You are ours, now, vampire. What is your name?"  
"Bardhubh of the Cinnétig," she answered, her voice soft.  
"Dreadful," he said. "but we'll feed you first and I'll find you a name later that I can pronounce. Here comes the boy now."

The other vampire sank down beside them, a body over his shoulder.  
"Fresh," he said, "Blood still warm."  
"Show the young one how to feed," Corvus said and his progeny extended his fangs, milky white in his narrow face. He swept his black hair back and extended his fangs. He showed the woman where to bite and she did so eagerly.  
Corvus looked at the two heads bent over the corpse and sighed inwardly. His boy was headstrong, mischievous, fond of troublemaking and almost impossible to discipline. Turning him had been a mistake; he was not an ideal companion. But a twist of fate had given Corvus another progeny – older, wiser, more settled and less likely to cause difficulty. He had been inclined to stake her when she woke, but she might have her uses.  
He considered it briefly, then made up his mind. He would take her with them. He would create his own little flock of ravens.

 _x x x_

 _Present Day_

"What do you mean she's gone?" Eric Northman said. "Define 'gone'."  
He stood in front of her, towering over her, his face whiter than usual in fury.  
Moya had always found the Viking intimidating; she'd had centuries of practice pretending that this was not the case. And now, as the Empress of Europe and the North African Territories, it was of utmost importance that none of her subjects see any kind of weakness.  
"We are currently unaware of her whereabouts," she replied calmly.  
"Do you mean to tell me," he hissed, "that she has been – _mislaid_? Isn't that a bit clumsy of you, Empress?"  
She smiled at him beatifically, ignoring the fact that he was throwing her own words back in her face.  
"We have known each other a long time, Empress," Northman said. His voice was low, threatening, though he had spoken no threat whatsoever. "So I want no bullshit. I want you to tell me exactly what happened."  
She glanced at the other people present to show him that his discretion was required.  
"Get them out," he said in the same low tone.  
She hesitated.  
"Get. Them. Out," he repeated.

She nodded and the assembled vampires and humans slowly left the room, picking up their bits and pieces, lingering in the doorway, hoping for gossip.  
" _Out_!" Eric roared and the door was promptly shut behind them. He whirled around to face Moya, pressed a long finger against her chest, square between her breasts. "Your vampire took my woman," he said.  
"He's not my vampire," she said, pushing his finger away. "Louisiana, we are doing everything possible. I have men out searching for him – I know all of his haunts. At this very moment, his house is being torn asunder. We will find them, I promise you."  
"Raphael Neven," Eric said, as though she had not spoken. "I want to see his entry in the Book of the Undead."  
"That isn't possible, I'm afraid," she said quickly. "Protocol dictates – "  
"I don't give a fuck about protocol!" he roared. "I will see that entry, whether you show me now or one of her relatives shows me later."  
She hesitated, capitulated. It was only a matter of minutes before the news was relayed to the Kennick family; Moya had asked her staff to give her thirty minutes before her parents were informed, but she knew that someone would have scuttled off to the archive to tell the girl's uncle.

At that moment, there was a rap on the door, then another. Aidan, the doorman, popped his head in.  
"Eh, Imperial Majesty? Um, James would like to speak to you. I know you said – but seeing as how he's her uncle and all, I thought – eh – "  
 _Speak of the devil and he will appear,_ Moya thought glumly.  
"Tell him to come in," Eric commanded. Aidan glanced at her and she shrugged in resignation.

James Kennick came rushing in. He was not very tall and had grown yearly rounder since he took over his uncle's job in the vampire archive. He was in his mid-fifties and had never married; he lived with his parents in their large house, the one that was stuffed to the gills with grisly vampire effects. He had the same reddish hair that many of the Kennicks had, standing up in tufts on the top of his head, but his beard was starting to grey. His shirt was untucked and his trousers crumpled, under his arm he had a tablet computer and two loose files.  
"I know who this Neven fellow is," he said as he rushed forward. "I have traced him back to a vampire called – "  
"James," she said softly, "This is Maggie's betrothed, Eric Northman."  
Kennick looked the other man up and down. "Hmm," he said. "Northman."  
"Kennick," the Viking said in return. They eyed each other warily.  
"I'm sure Maggie told you all about him," James said. "I told her everything I know."  
"There's not much to know about him," the Empress said. Her heart began to beat a little faster.  
"Maggie never mentioned him," Eric said, his voice dull. "Who is he?"  
"Raphael is a bit of ... a bit of a maverick. He's always been hard to pin down," she interjected, fixing James Kennick with a glare that would have caused another man to falter. Not so, the Kennick. Not because he was especially brave, but because he was not particularly good at figuring out what was expected of him. He simply mouthed "Huh?" and turned to Eric, holding up his iPad so the taller man could see it. With a flourish, he swiped the screen into activity.  
"We think – Maggie and I think he might be a vampire called variously called Raven, Corban, or Corbyn. A mercenary. He has a habit of getting other vampires staked in his place, then he disappears and turns up decades later, often with a mute vampire called Gunnar. We have traced a trail from the late 1940s in Russia that seems to lead to this guy, Raphael Neven. She knew he lived in Dublin – I thought that was the reason you'd come here. Then I heard about your, um, wedding."

James Kennick's voice petered out and he looked from Eric to the Empress.  
Eric took the tablet and ran his finger down the screen, reading the entry.  
"Raphael Neven," Northman said, turning to her. "Why was he working for the King of Texas? Do you not know the whereabouts of your subjects, Empress? Is that how you run things here in Dublin?"  
He took a step closer, and he clenched and unclenched his fists so his knuckles cracked. Moya smiled, simply because stretching her lips stopped her teeth from chattering.  
"James, my old friend," she said softly, "I would appreciate it if you would leave us alone for a few minutes."  
She waited till the archivist had pulled the door behind him.  
"Raphael is – has always been a law unto himself," she began, "he was involved with the Russian uprising in '47 and Emperor Charles ordered him staked. I helped him escape and he promised not to return as long as Charles was emperor. He kept that promise, Eric, he has only been back in Dublin a few years."  
"Why was he working for the King of Texas?"  
"I don't know," she said, despairing. "He told me he was at some conference in Germany."  
"Don't you have a list of his passports, his aliases?" Eric prodded coldly. "Did he not have to register with the local German authority when he arrived?"  
Moya felt her throat tighten. "He does things ... a bit differently," she said quietly.

Eric stared at her and without saying a word, lowered himself down on to the throne – her throne, the throne of all the European emperors. He shifted slightly on the wooden seat, stretched his legs out and looked at her insolently.  
"Why does this vampire get special treatment, Moya?" he said, drumming his fingers on the throne. She hated to admit it, but he looked far more comfortable in it than she had ever been, and his use of her first name niggled at her.  
"He's just ..." she struggled to find the words.  
Eric held up the iPad. "Raphael Neven. Turned in 1932. Well, that's a lie and we both know it. So... is he your lover? No? Your maker? Is he your maker, woman?"  
"No," she snapped. "My maker was Quintus Antonius Pius, you know that, you fool. That has never been a secret. He's not my maker."  
"Then who is he? Do you share a maker? Is he your brother? No? Then why so loyal? Why is he allowed an unregistered passport? Why is he working for Texas? Why does he have my woman?"  
She held up a hand to silence him.  
"He's my friend," she said weakly.  
"Your friend?" Eric sneered. "You would allow him to do all of this because he's your _friend_?"  
She licked her dry lips and cleared her throat.  
"His maker and my maker were turned by the same vampire," she said. "They took me in after I was turned and I walked with them for a couple of centuries. Raphael is the closest I have to family but we are not kin, not really. He is my ... He is my friend, Eric."

Eric stood up and tossed the iPad on to the throne and descended the steps with his loping stride.  
"Find new friends, Empress," he said. "Find this one first, then seek out new companions. If he has harmed a hair on her head, I will hold you personally responsible."  
"She has his blood," Moya said, her words tumbling out. "How do you know she was taken? What if she went willingly?"  
Eric hesitated. "That's not what your serving woman said," he replied, referring to Silvia. "She said he took her."  
"She could've screamed. She would've brought any number of people running," the Empress said, taking pleasure in the ripple that crossed the surface of Northman's smooth countenance. "She could've screamed, Eric, but she didn't."  
A muscle moved in his jaw and she held his gaze, defiantly, then brushed past him and mounted the dais. She removed the iPad and took her place in the throne, gazing down at him with her best implacable expression.  
"Just find them," Eric growled.  
"If they want to be found," she replied. And allowed herself a smile.


	27. Chapter 27

"Listen," the vampire said. "Are you listening?"  
He placed an icy hand on either one of my cheeks and held my face still for a second, then moved it from side to side. I tried to nod.  
"Magdalena," Hraefn said softly, "You saw what I did to that woman, right? I'll do the same to you if you make a sound, do you understand? Because in this scenario, I have nothing to lose. Seriously: nothing. If they catch me, I'll get the True Death, but I will send you ahead of me first. Is that clear?"  
His face was so close to mine, I could see the flecks of darker colour in the pupils of his eyes, feel the coldness emanating from his skin. He pressed his forehead against mine and breathed deep, smelling my scent. I was overwhelmed by his and tried to pull away.  
"Good," he said. "Be quiet and we'll be out of here in a matter of minutes."  
Then his face broke into a grin. "Come on, my darling," he whispered and he pulled me up the narrow stairs that led to the attic.  
"Where are we going?" I asked in a low voice.  
"You'll see," he said. At the top of the stairs there was a fire door. The vampire stood on his toes and ran his fingers along the top of the frame, retrieving a key. He unlocked the door and gallantly held it open for me. I hesitated, then brushed past him, the lace of my voluminous dress gathered into a giant ball in front of me. He grinned down at me as I passed, remarkably amused for a man that was on the brink of being the most hunted vampire in the European territories.

My hand still in his, the vampire hit a light switch and I blinked in the rude light. The attic was jammed with all of the assorted junk that had been accumulated over the centuries. Someone at some point had made an attempt to organise it, installing metal shelves under the eaves, stacking and labelling boxes. I read the markings: DECANTERS. HATS (Ceremonial). CUTLERY.  
I battled an intense urge to look at the ceremonial hats, but the vampire was tugging me on. He stopped at stack of trunks, the kind people used to have when they went travelling, and he pulled down one marked 'WOMEN'.  
"Wait," he said and pulled a box off one of the shelves. He extracted an large dagger, whose blade was tarnished but still impressively long.  
"Decorative," he said in response to my shocked face, "Blunt as fuck."  
He used the heel of his hand to whack it against the locks on the trunk like a chisel and, probably creaky with age, they popped off. When he flipped open the lid, we both pulled back at the smell of mothballs.  
"Find something," he said, waving a hand in front of his nose. "And quick. You can't wear that wedding dress, you look insane. Quickly," he said, as I hesitated.  
"Can we talk about this, Hraefn? It is Hraefn, is it? Or would you prefer Raphael?"  
"My name is Hraefn," he said. "I told you that already."  
"Hraefn, why are you doing this? We can just stop right here – you leave, I go back downstairs. No harm done."  
He looked at me. He had a way of studying me that made me wonder if he could see inside my head.  
"You don't want this, Maggie," he said. "I'm not abducting you, baby, I'm rescuing you."  
"I don't want to be rescued," I said hoarsely.  
"I think you do, but you don't want to admit it."  
"I really don't," I said, holding his gaze.  
He tipped his head to one side, his dark hair falling into his eyes. Impatiently, he brushed it away.  
"Tell you what," he said. "I still don't believe you, so I'm just going to get you on out of here and you can persuade me otherwise. Right?"  
I opened my mouth to argue, but he placed a cold hand on my lips.  
"I don't think you're picking up the tone of the room, Magdalena," he said. "You're coming with. Now get something to wear or you're coming with me in that?"  
Downstairs I heard the faint noises of banging, shouting.  
"You're coming with, Magdalena," he said, placing his hands on my cheeks again. He moved my head from side to side, gently, feeling my skull move beneath his fingers. I shivered; he released me and I started to rummage in the trunk. I pulled out a jumper that had probably been knit by hand sometime in the sixties, judging by the colour, and a tweed skirt of a similar vintage. I pulled down the frothy wedding dress and Hraefn dipped his head to one side, unashamedly taking stock of my bra, my skin, my breasts. I turned my back to him and got dressed as quickly and modestly as I could, aware that he never took his eyes off me for a second. When I was done, he moved to brush something off the sweater, but I snarled at him and he pulled his hand back, momentarily startled, before he took my hand and led me down to the very back of the attic.

"Stand back," he said softly, and pulled a huge wardrobe aside. Behind it was a boarded-up doorframe, the planks grey with age, the nails leaking rust onto the wood around them. Glancing over his shoulder at the way we'd come, he picked up a poker from a pile of assorted fireplace utensils on the floor, blew off the cobwebs and used it to remove a couple of boards, enough to snake his hand in and open the door behind it. He quickly pulled off a final board and indicated that I should crawl through the hole.  
"Go," he said. I dropped to my knees and went. I was in darkness, except for the light thrown by the attic we'd just left. There was no sign of Hraefn, then suddenly the light went off in the attic and he scrambled through the hole behind me. From next door, the noises and creaking became louder and I had a hunch that the search party were at the attic door, looking for a key. As if he could read my mind, Hraefn held it up in the dim light and grinned. He quickyl led us over to a trapdoor, a warning finger pressed to his lip, and lowered the ladder down into the hall below. I looked around as I descended cautiously: it was an office building of some kind. The doors bore signs that said things like ASSETS ACQUISITION and HUMAN RESOURCES.  
"What is this place?" I asked, curiously, but he shrugged.  
"It used to belong to the Featherly family," he said. "Charles had the door boarded up about a hundred years ago - I, in fact, was the one who did the hammering. I thought it was a good idea to put the wardrobe in front of it, just in case. You never know when you might need an escape route, right?"  
He grabbed my hand and took off down the carpeted stairs. I looked into every CCTV camera that we passed, mouthed 'Help', hoping that someone, somewhere, might see me and maybe call the police. Hraefn blithely hopped down the stairs, got to the front door and whipped it open, oblivious to the cacophony of alarms that it set off within. He pulled me out on to the steps with a flourish, yanking the door shut behind him, and we set off down the street – he striding purposefully through the puddles, me scampering to keep up, still in my slippers, a tweed skirt and an orange sweater that was already starting to itch.

"Wait," he said suddenly and, without warning, pressed me up against the railings of the Georgian building that housed an insurance company. His head bent, his lips covered mine and he forced his tongue into my mouth. I struggled beneath him, twisting to get away, but that made him move closer, pressing his crotch against my stomach to pin me into place. He ran a hand into my hair, stroking the skin of my scalp – a caress that felt like a threat – and his other hand was in the small of my back, pushing my body against the hardness of his. When I tried to make a noise, he jammed his tongue in further; it felt like I was being gagged. I just let myself go limp, hoping that not resisting would make him relieve the pressure, the grip on my hair, the tongue in my mouth. It worked, I felt him relax and his kiss became less frantic, more gentle. He drew his face away slowly, planting a soft kiss on my lips, then placed his extended fangs against my neck - not enough to draw blood, but enough, I was sure, to leave an impression on my skin and a bigger impression on my psyche. I turned my head from him and stare at the puddle on the ground beside us, my reflection disrupted by the rain.  
When he stepped away from me, two tears trickled down my cheeks, and I wiped them away on the sleeve of my orange sweater. He watched me do it, his face an odd mixture of curiosity and sadness, but said nothing.

He opened the door of a parked car and pushed me gently in.  
"We have to get out of here," he said. "Northman has arrived, he might smell you."  
I twisted around in my seat to look out the back window, but Hraefn was already pulling out into traffic – not too fast, not too conspicuous.  
"How do you know?" I asked, staring out the back window as we drove away. The doors of the vampire parliament's building were open, people spilling out on to the steps, a sure sign that panic had broken out inside. I peered at the shadowy shapes, hoping to see one much taller than the others but I couldn't recognise Eric's unmistakeable form.  
"I saw him on the other side of the street," he said, checking the rear-view mirror. "That's why we kissed."  
He patted my knee. "Sorry for being so ... passionate," he said and smiled at me in a conciliatory way. I took a deep breath and looked out the window, not trusting myself to reply. He made a turn, and I knew he was leaving Dublin, heading for the motorway. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass that was splattered by hundreds of raindrops.  
"It'll be dawn soon," I said dully.  
"I know," he grinned. "I'll take care of us, Magdalena. Don't worry, baby. From now on, I'll take care of you like that idiot never could. I promise."  
He laid a cold hand on my knee once more, but this time I yanked it off.

I heard him chuckle quietly but I fixed my gaze out the window, watching people hurry through the rain to catch their buses home after a night of revelry; past shops, pubs, houses, industrial complexes, then towards the M50 motorway and beyond that, into the Irish midlands.  
"Where shall we go?" he asked me suddenly, his narrow face lit up by his mischievous grin. "West? Over to the coast? North? Across the border into Northern Ireland, maybe over to mainland Britain? South? Down to Cork, Kerry? What do you fancy?"  
I wriggled around to face him. "What do you mean?" I gasped. "Didn't you have this planned?"  
He snorted. "Yeah, right," he said. "I'm more of a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy. I thought you might have picked that up already. I'm easy, Maggie. Let's go where your heart desires. But decide quick 'cause I have to take the next exit."  
"Seriously?" I began, my voice a shriek. "You seriously want me to - ?"  
"South it is, then," he said and his finger tipped the indicator. "Chill, baby. I have friends we can stay with. You'll love them."  
He turned to wink at me, then returned his gaze to motorway that was almost empty of cars in the middle of this rainy night. He flicked on the radio and put his foot to the gas. The car shot down the road, splashing through the rain with a hiss.

 _*** Thank you for your comments, they are very much appreciated. ***_


	28. Chapter 28

The traffic was bad in Dublin's city centre and the rain made it worse. But Hraefn drove without showing the slightest bit of unease or worry. He turned the pressed the buttons on the radio till he found a station playing a song he liked, glancing over at me with a smile on his face.  
"Do you like this one?" he asked.  
I remained pointedly silent. But that didn't seem to bother him; in fact, he chatted easily as though I were a willing participant in the conversation.  
"I was thinking of going to ground in Kilkenny. I have a property there, on the banks of the river Barrow. I haven't been there for a long time but there's a management company taking care of it, so it should be habitable. I mean, it's only one night, right? We'll have to head to Rosslare tomorrow night and get a ferry to mainland Europe. Once we're on the mainland we can decide where we want to live."  
He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling mischievously, like it was all a grand old lark. I shook my head in a mixture of disgust and despair.

The car slowed at a traffic light and I turned to look out the window. My eyes focused on the letters over the door: GARDA.  
Holy shit. We'd stopped in front of a Garda station – the police. Without thinking I yanked the door open and almost tumbled out. Quick as lightning, Hraefn pulled me back in, whiplash-fast. At that moment the traffic light turned green and the car behind us honked its horn.  
"What the fuck, Magdalena?" he cried, hurt. "That's so dangerous! If I'd driven off, you could've been killed!"  
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Hraefn," I growled. "You have abducted me. You're taking me off somewhere to rape me, probably kill me and dispose of my body. I mean, you've killed one innocent woman tonight, how do I know I won't be next?"  
His mouth moved, no sound came out. He glanced in the rear-view mirror then pulled into a loading bay in front of a shop on a busy street before wriggling around in his seat to face me.  
"Magdalena," he said softly. "I would never hurt you. We have a blood bond, my darling: I can feel you, and don't think I can't feel your fear. Know this: you are precious to me and I would not harm a hair on your head."  
"You abducted me," I repeated. "I did not go willingly, remember?"  
He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back off his face. His profile was backlit by the lights of the pub across the road: sharp nose, pointed chin.  
"Give me time," he said, "And I can make you change your mind."  
A little rage rose in me and made my voice husky. "I don't need anyone to make me change my mind. I know my own mind, thank you very much. I'm getting out of this car right now and you're not going to stop me."

I put my hand on the door handle, expecting to be stopped, my fingers on the keys in my pockets. _I could use them to stab him in the eye,_ I thought. But he didn't do anything, just inclined his head in acquiescence.  
"I just wanted to save you," he said. "You just seem so ... lost."  
I snorted.  
"Lost?" I scoffed. "Yeah, I'm sure that's how you justify it."  
"You're so busy playing the role of Queen of Louisiana, loving consort to Great King Eric, that you kind of lost your own self somewhere in there," he said. "You're too smart to be the concubine and personal secretary to that boorish thug."  
That stung and it made me pause, the car door open a crack.  
"That's not the way it is," I said defiantly.  
"Moira told me you've been dragging your heels about this wedding," he said.  
"So that's how you knew I'd be there tonight," I concluded. "Does the empress tell you everything?"  
"Pretty much. We go back a long way," he said and his face cracked into a broad smile. "She told me that Northman wanted this done without delay, without fuss. She said it was because everyone is saying he's afraid you'd bolt and leave him at the altar. So I just ... I just wanted to help. I thought it might help everyone save face if you were taken. Taken away."  
I stared at him. Hraefn's face was half in shadow, so it was hard to read his facial expression.  
"And then what?" I asked. "Did you think I'd be okay with it?"  
"In time," he said. "And I have lots of time. I wanted to take you someplace wonderful, give you a life full of meaning. Art, culture, theatre, books. Treat you like a real queen. And I thought ... well, we have a connection, don't we? You and me?"  
I didn't answer. But we did. In another place, at another time, he and I would have a lot in common.  
"How did you think this would work in practice?" I asked sarcastically. "This life of books and plays and operas? You know Eric would hunt you down. And how do you expect to cross international borders without the authorities being alerted? Because you know there'll be a missing persons report filed before the night is out."  
"New papers, new passports are not a problem –"  
"How? Haven't you ever heard of biometric data? How are you going to get around that?" I said, my voice rising angrily.  
"You can get around it," he said patiently. "With the right money and the right connections, it's not a problem."  
"So we run away and live happily ever after," I said bitterly. "Till Eric finds us and kills you, me or both of us. Sounds like a good plan."

He placed a hand over mine. His skin was cold but I felt a current run from his icy palm up my arm.  
"Fine," he said. "Go back to him if he makes you happy. All I ever wanted to was to make you happy and if that's what does it, my darling, you are free to go."  
I put my hand on the door handle, hesitated a second.  
"If he makes you happy," he continued, "Locked up in that prison disguised as a ridiculous palace, dancing attendance on a bunch of hillbillies."  
I opened the car door.  
"I won't be able to stop him hunting you down," I warned.  
"If he loved you, he wouldn't do it," he said. "He wouldn't do it if you asked and I know you would never ask him."  
"It'll be a matter of honour," I said. "You know how he is."  
" _His_ honour," Hraefn replied darkly. "Not yours. He won't give a shit about yours. He will come for me, even if you ask him not to, because all Northman cares about is himself."  
I swallowed, pushed the door open and got out. The rain pelted off the footpath.  
"Will you be okay?" I asked before I shut the door.  
He stared at me and although I could barely see his features, I knew his black-brown eyes were boring into me, thinking about something. Then he reached into the back of the car and retrieved a small black pouch. He opened it and pulled something out, then took my phone and a small notebook out of the glove compartment, which he opened and scrawled a number on a page. He pulled a couple of bank notes from his wallet, tucking them inside the little book he'd removed from the pouch.

"This is for you," he said, extending his hand. "It's my gift to you, along with my telephone number, in case you change your mind."  
I turned over his gift in my hand. He'd given me an Irish passport. I flipped it open and there was my photo, next to it the name MARGARET O'REILLY, the date of birth two months before my own. I gasped.  
"Where did you get this?" I said. It was identical to my actual passport, except the number, the date of birth and the name were different.  
"I've known about your wedding for a while now," he smiled. "I was prepared."  
He started the car again, put it in gear.  
"You have another choice now, Magdalena," he said, grinning at me. He nodded his head slowly, then, slowly, feeling almost like I was sleepwalking, I shut the car door, and ducked under the awning of a shop as I watched his car pull out and drive away. He didn't look back. I flipped open the pages of the passport till I found the forty euros he'd put inside, then flagged down a taxi to get back to the Vampire Headquarters. My stomach sank as the taxi headed down the wet streets, the driver cheerfully trying to make conversation. I fingered the passport, flicking through the pages, then I tucked it into the waistband of my skirt. I rang Eric's number and he answered with a breathless, "Maggie?"  
"I'm okay," I said. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm coming back."  
And before he could say anything else, I hung up and switched off the phone.  
I was coming back.  
Or was I?

xxx

"He let you go?" Eric said, his voice incredulous.  
"I asked him to let me go and he did," I answered simply.  
He stroked my hair with one of his large hands and I leaned my forehead against his chest. He was still wearing the black suit that he was to be married in, I rubbed my skin against the soft wool of the jacket, breathing deep his smell.  
"I will kill him," he said and behind his broad back, I heard the Empress make a soft noise like a gasp. Still clutching me to his chest, he turned to look at her. "I will hunt him down and kill him," he declared, looking around at the people assembled in the Great Hall. "This vampire will meet the True Death."  
I remembered what Hraefn had said and my stomach knotted.  
He looked down at me and kissed the top of his head. "Let us put this behind us," he said softly. "Let's be married."  
"I don't have a white dress," I said weakly.  
"You can be wrapped in a sheet as far as I'm concerned," he grinned.  
"Let's wait," I said, running my fingers up and down his chest, feeling the threads of his shirt. He shivered. "I need to recover from what happened here tonight – everyone is so upset. And a woman _died_ , Eric."  
He looked at me uncomprehendingly. I glanced over at my mother, who was standing with my grandmother, both of them in their Sunday best. She hurried forward and gently took me from Eric's grip.  
"She needs a little time, Eric," she said with her most charming smile. "She's been through a terrible ordeal."  
"Another terrible ordeal," I whispered. I dropped my fingers. "I want to go back to our hotel," I said to Eric. "I want to leave now."  
He looked at me in a way I had never seen before, something akin to realisation crossing his features. His eyes looked down at the floor and glanced up at me again.  
"As you wish," he said formally, and held out his hand.  
I thanked the Irish vampires for their help, bid the Empress farewell, trying not to look at her bloodstained eyes, and kissed my parents and grandparents goodbye. Dawn was coming and we needed to get back to the hotel as soon as possible; I promised to call them in a few hours. My grandfather peered at me, saying nothing. I knew what he wanted to say, though. I nodded at him wordlessly and he stood aside to let us leave.

Eric and I were silent in the taxi, my head leaning against his shoulder. Eric looked out the window, his long arm wrapped around my shoulders. When we got to the hotel room, I slipped into the bathroom, showered and changed into clean clothes, hiding the passport in my cosmetic bag. I came back out to find Eric sitting on the edge of bed his legs stretched out before him. When I came out, he looked up. He had that weird look on his face again, the look that made him appear so young. Vulnerable. My gut wrenched. We stared at each other, neither wanting to be the first to speak.  
"I don't want you to go after Hraefn," I said finally. "I want this to end here."  
"I can't do that," he said in an even, matter-of-fact tone. "He must meet the True Death."  
"I don't want you to do that," I repeated.  
"It is a matter of honour," Eric said.  
" _Your_ honour."  
"Yes," he said, a bit perplexed. " _My_ honour."  
I nodded, then sat down on the bed next to him.

"Eric - " I began.  
"Don't say it," he begged  
I took one of his hands in both of mine, examining the skin, the fingernails. How many times had we lain in bed, our fingers intertwined? I resisted the urge to kiss his knuckles, stroke the back of his hand, run a fingertip along the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist, something that would make him quiver in anticipation of being touched the same way elsewhere.  
"I think I need to leave," I said.  
"Did he give you his blood?" he snarled. "What did he do to you?"  
"He did nothing." I was quiet, calm. "It just made me realise that ... I'm not happy. We've never been on an equal footing and I'm just tired of being pushed around by vampires."  
"This would change if we were married," he said quickly.  
"It wouldn't," I said. "We both know that. And it's not your fault: I knew what I was getting into the moment Ilaria offered me a job in the Empress' retinue. More fool me for believing it would be different for me than it has ever been for any human that got involved with a vampire."  
My words had a bitter tone to them and I didn't try to disguise it. I was bitter: angry at myself for being in a situation that was essentially of my own creating.  
"And this vampire, this Hraefn, made you believe this," Eric said.  
"Yes," I said. "No. Maybe. This whole incident just made it all clearer. I've known it all along, that's why I never wanted to marry you. I need to get out, Eric. Get away from everything."  
My voice rose in a wail. All of a sudden it was clear: I wanted out.

Eric stood up abruptly, pushing me away.  
"Excellent," he spat. "Wonderful. Well, don't let me get in your way."  
He started grabbing his stuff, throwing it into a heap on the bed.  
"Eric," I wheedled, "Don't be that way. I want us to part on good terms. Please, we've been through so much."  
He pulled his suitcase out of the cupboard, ignoring me, tossing the items in haphazardly, pulling his suits off the hangers and throwing them in on top. This alone told me he was upset: this was a man who folded his socks when he took them off. I went to his side, laid a hand on his arm.  
"Eric," I said, "Please don't be like this."  
His white cheeks were faintly pink as he shook my hand away. He swept past me, grabbed his things from the bathroom, plonking them on top of his Armani suit, then viciously yanked the zipper shut. He turned to face me, standing at his full height. I often forgot how tall he was, how intimidating he could be. He looked down at me with a cold expression on his face, his features locked and shut.  
"Goodbye, Miss Kennick," he said. "I wish you all the best with your future endeavours."

Mouth open, I watched him turn and leave the room, slamming the door behind him with a bang. I curled up on the bed with my hands over my face, too numb to do anything till at some point after dawn I finally fell asleep.


	29. Chapter 29

The next night I informed the Empress that Mr Northman was gone and that there would be no further need of a commitment ceremony. Her normally pale face seemed whiter than usual and her thin fingers gripped the arm rests of her throne.  
"I see," she said, staring at me. I stared back at her. She wore her dark hair tied up in a simple topknot and she was wearing a tailored black dress, like a stern governess. A very pale, stern governess. "Am I to take it that your association with Mr Northman has ended thusly?"  
"It has," I said firmly, my voice ringing out in the Great Hall. I heard whispers behind me.  
"And with Mr Corbyn?" she asked. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out who she meant – Hraefn.  
"I never had any association with Mr Corbyn," I said, even more firmly. "Certainly none of my choosing."  
She narrowed her eyes at me and I narrowed mine back at her. She relented first.  
"Very well," she conceded. "And what are your plans now, Miss Kennick?"  
"I think my ... my disassociation with Mr Northman effectively tendered my resignation with the Court of Louisiana – " I began.  
"Seek you a position here?" she interrupted sharply.  
"No, Empress," I said quickly and I saw her relax infinitesimally. "I will return to my human life, continue with my own kind."  
She inclined her head, drumming her fingertips to her lips.  
"I see," she said again. "Well, as you are a Kennick, you will be entitled to protection wherever you go in my Empire."  
 _I don't intend to have anything to do with any creature that would cause me to need protection,_ I thought angrily, but instead I just nodded my head solemnly and said my thanks. She dismissed me with an imperial wave of her hand and my father, who had been standing to the side, steered me away, his fingers gripping my elbow tightly.  
"Well done," he whispered.

I stayed with my parents for a few days, during which time I bought a new phone and hid my American one in a drawer in my old room. My phone was flooded with angry messages from Pam – I read the first one, but as it was basically just a list of bad words, I didn't bother to read the rest – concerned messages from Sookie and members of the staff at the court. The only message I replied to was from Mr Montgomery, the only vampire I felt I would miss. I hoped Eric would be kind to him now that I wasn't there to protect the older man from the excesses of his bad temper. I felt Eric's blood coursing through my veins more strongly than I had had when we lived together: his absence made me more aware of all the ripples of feeling I could only attribute to him: the swell of anger that unexpectedly filled my ribcage (probably dealing with some bureaucrat). The dull thump I had learned to recognise as boredom (probably listening to the bureaucrat). And worst of all, the small pinch of pleasure that I knew meant he was having sex with someone. I knew this because I used to feel it when he was having sex with me. It was the worst break-up I'd ever had, like being mentally shackled to my ex, or forced to wear his clothes or his scent, when what I really needed was a clean break.

And underneath it all was something else, like a shadow. It was the other vampire's blood; weaker, harder to detect. But if I stayed still for a moment, I could sometimes concentrate hard enough to feel it there, like fingernails lightly scratching my skin. _How does Sookie Stackhouse do it?_ I wondered. She'd had a lot of the vampire Compton's blood, I guessed, and had taken Eric's too – did she still feel them? Did she stand in front of the refrigerator, wondering whether she wanted cheese or ham on her sandwich, while a cold hand ran down her spine, letting her know that, somewhere, Eric had awoken?

I wanted to ask her. I wanted to talk to someone who knew what I was going through, so I hung around the house, trying to resist the temptation to look at my American phone till I finally fetched a hammer, pulled the phone out of the drawer and placed on the tabletop. I took a deep breath and swung the hammer.  
And pulled short, just millimetres from the screen's glass.  
"What are you doing?" my mother said from the doorway. She was holding a laundry basket and she looked as though she'd stopped mid-step, which she probably had.  
"I don't think I can resist the temptation to look at it," I cried. "I really want to Google Eric or Whatsapp him or stalk the crap out of Fangtasia on Facebook. Social media is making it really fricking hard to break up with someone."  
"I know," she said sympathetically. "Give that phone a good old whack, then."  
I hesitated.  
"I can't," I admitted.  
"Why not?"  
"I'm not strong enough."  
My mother put down the basket, sat down beside me and took the phone out of my hands.  
"I'll just take it, then," she said. "You can have it back when you're able to use it without wrecking your life again."  
"You can't stop me Googling," I said weakly.  
"This is like an addiction," she smiled. "Take it one day at a time. If you get to thirty days without Googling Northman, I'll bake you a cake."  
I smiled back at her, a wobbly smile. "Deal," I said.  
"Deal," she replied and we shook hands.  
"Would you make a banoffee pie?" I asked.  
"Don't push it," was her reply, as she picked up her basket.

I borrowed my mother's car and drove to the west of Ireland for a few days, far from my phone, which I knew my mother had hidden in her underwear drawer. I made sure to travel by day, booking into Bed and Breakfasts that had signs on the door that said _Apologies: no vampire facilities available_ , trying to stay at places where vampires would not roam the halls while I slept, not leaving the place after dark. I wore silver chains and rings, and at night I slept with silver thimbles on my fingertips, as my ancestors once had. Except they used to sleep clutching a silver cross and a wooden stake as well. During the day I drove to out of whatever town or village I had stayed in and parked my car somewhere along a hiking trail. And then I walked and walked and walked, along grassy paths and sandy tracks, little roads that were barely wide enough for a tractor, up narrow stony pathways that led to the top of cliffs, looking out over the angry Atlantic, all churning grey water beneath a charcoal sky, the green fields smudged with muck and puddles. Because all the time it rained: the kind of relentless rain that comes in over Ireland at the start of autumn and stays till spring. (Or summer. Or basically just never stops till the following autumn.) Sometimes it rained less, a gentle drizzle that looked like mist over the waves; sometimes it rained more, a thundering shower of cold raindrops that pelted my skin like stones. And sometimes the clouds cleared and there was a short break, as though the weather needed a breather. That's when I'd meet other walkers:  
"Grand day for it!" they'd call. "At least it's dry, thank God!"  
like the respite from the rain was some kind of divine blessing. I nodded and smiled and we exchanged waves, and I walked on till I reached some kind of point in my head that felt like a good place to turn around, then I walked back, sodden, to my car and a hot shower at the bed and breakfast. I'd buy some food to take away and eat it in my room, watching a little TV before collapsing into bed and sleeping like the dead.

Like the dead.  
The irony was not lost on me. But I'd found that if I was out in the rain, shivering under a tree, seeking shelter from the elements with some bedraggled sheep, any quiver of feeling I might have detected was just the cold, the wet, the proximity to some frankly malodorous sheep. One day I drove west to Connemara and took a ferry out to the Aran Islands and spent a surprisingly dry couple of days walking the island of Inis Mór, trekking to the ancient fort of Dun Aonghasa on a windy October afternoon. I stood looking out over the ocean, westwards to America, wondering forlornly what Eric was doing, wondering why I was missing him.  
Wondering what I was doing, I realised suddenly, because given Ireland's geographic position, I was actually staring out over the ocean like a lovesick calf at northern Canada and not southern Louisiana.  
 _You big ninny,_ I thought. _Pull yourself together, Maggie._

So I took a ferry back to the mainland and turned eastwards, heading back towards Dublin. Spontaneously, on the way, I followed a hand-written sign that said TEA ROOM in bold letters and found myself in a cafe in the converted stable of a stately home. The large house was somewhat dilapidated, paint flaking off in places, but the cafe had been recently renovated; it was cosy, warm ... and, apart from me, empty. I paid for a coffee and a scone and the woman behind the counter, keen for a chat, brought over her cup of tea to my table and sat down. She asked me where I was from and where I was going and, suddenly eager to talk to someone who knew nothing about me, I gave her the abbreviated version of my life. Just taking a few days off before I start looking for a job. Just back from the USA. Where'd worked for the vampire court of Louisiana. No, mostly during the day, not much to do with the vampires. Administration. Public Relations. Low-level bureaucrat.  
" _Amazing_ ," the woman, Imelda, said. She was about as old as my mother. "Petra!" she cried, leaning back in her chair. " _Petra_!"  
A woman came out from behind the cafe counter, a stout woman with short grey hair, in a white chef's jacket. She squeezed Imelda's shoulder as she sat down and they smiled at each other.  
"She worked with _vampires_ ," Imelda said, nodding at me. " _Real_ vampires. In _New Orleans_."  
" _For_ vampires," I corrected. "They have a day staff and a night staff. I worked on the day staff."  
A teensy-weensy lie.  
"What brings you back to Ireland?" Petra asked. She had an accent, probably German or Dutch.  
"My marriage broke up," I said. "He was a bit ... intense. Things didn't end that well and he took my leaving badly. I thought it would be best to put distance between us."  
It wasn't a lie, exactly, more like a blurring of the truth.

The two women looked fascinated and I felt a little bad.  
"So I've come back to Ireland to start again," I said with a weak little laugh. "I doubt he'll come looking for me here. I'm just going to find some work and get my life back together again."  
"What kind of work?" Imelda asked.  
"Anything, really," I said. "I've done a lot of things. Whatever pays the bills. I'm not afraid of hard work, I'm sure I'll find something easily."  
The women glanced at one another.  
"We could do with another pair of hands," Petra said. "We can't pay much but we can offer you a room till you find a place of your own. We're looking for someone to help us in the cafe, in the garden."  
"With all of that social media stuff – " Imelda said. "We're hopeless at it and it seems like everyone is on Instagram nowadays."  
"That's very kind," I said, racked with guilt, "but you really don't have to offer me a job."  
Petra put a rough hand over mine. "Imelda has been in your shoes," she said kindly. "She had to get out of a bad marriage very quickly. We know how it is. Stay and work with us for a few months. Who would ever think of looking for you here?"

 _Who would ever think of looking for me here?_  
Magic words.  
I looked from one to the other.  
"Why not?" I said. "Thank you. Thank you very much."  
They beamed at me.  
"What's your name, by the way?" Petra asked.  
"Margaret O'Reilly," I said without hesitating. "But everyone calls me Maggie."  
As if to underline the lie, I felt a searing in my solar plexus.  
Somewhere on the other side of the world, Eric had risen.  
I quashed the feeling, smiling at my new employers.  
Who would ever think of looking for me here?  
No one, that's who.

 ***** Thank you for reading and many, many thanks for your reviews! *****


	30. Chapter 30

_14 Months Later  
Ballygar, Co. Galway, Ireland  
33 miles from Galway city_

I had just finished rubbing hand-cream into my calloused palms when my mother rang, and the picture I had taken of her the previous Christmas popped up on the screen of my mobile.  
" 'Lo?" I said, jamming it under my chin.  
"Hello Maggie, is this a bad time? Are you still working?"  
"No, it's fine. How are things?"  
It was nearly nine in the evening but the question was justified. I'd originally been hired by Petra and Imelda to work in their fledgling cafe, but had ended up also working with them on the renovation of the old house they were trying to turn into a guesthouse. I'd never done so much physical work in my entire life: I'd stripped wallpaper, plastered walls, swung sledgehammers, wheeled out dozens and dozens of barrows full of dirt and debris. It was satisfying in a way I'd never imagined: I got up early in the morning and helped Petra bake scones and apple pies, worked the lunchtime shift in the cafe and spent the afternoons carefully sanding down oak floors, winning back the wood inch by grimy inch. I was too tired, too bone-tired, to think about vampires. And when I slept, I mostly slept like the dead- the undead? – exhausted, black sleep. Only sometimes in the pre-dawn hours did I wake in pitch darkness and extend a hand, expecting it to rest on the large ribcage of a resting vampire.  
But my hand only touched a cold mattress.

"Grand, grand," she said, her voice a little odd. "Now, Maggie, I need to tell you something and you're not to panic."  
Whereupon I started to panic.  
"What? What is it? What's wrong?" I said, freaking out. I tried to grab the phone with my slippery hands.  
"I'm just telling you because everyone says you're not to know, but we think you have a right to. After all, it concerns you."  
I heard the low murmur of a male voice softly in the background – probably my father. My mother always had to make the difficult phone calls, he preferred to talk over her shoulder into the mouthpiece.  
"What is it?"  
"Well, your Viking is back in Dublin –"  
"I'm sorry: _what_?"  
"Your Viking is back in Dublin."  
"He's not my Viking," I said, my mouth fuzzy. "Why is he in Dublin?"  
She cleared her throat. "I wrote it down so I wouldn't get it mixed up," she informed me. I heard the rustle of paper. "Anyways, the state of Louisiana is suing Texas for conspiring against the king of Louisiana and abducting his consort. That's you," she added, as if I didn't know.  
"And?"  
"And apparently your Viking – "  
"He has a name," I interjected.  
There was a pause.  
"Mr Northman has no witnesses to the incident, except for you and some other humans – Sookhouses?"  
"Stackhouses. Sookie and Jason?"  
"I didn't write it down but that might be right. But humans aren't reliable witnesses because they can be glamoured – that's what the American Vampire Authority says, anyway."  
"Neither Sookie nor I can be glamoured," I muttered but I knew why Eric had said nothing. That kind of thing makes a human vulnerable. The fewer vampires know it, the better, and Mr Northman had gallantly chosen to keep that information to himself. So I asked, "And what about the Sherriff, a vampire called Jessica?"

There was the low murmur again as my mother consulted with my father.  
"She's considered an impartial witness, she's loyal to Louisiana," my mother said, as though repeating something learned by rote.  
"Why is Eric in Dublin?" I asked, my heart turning cold. "Is he looking for me?"  
My mother paused. "No," she said. "He's here to find that other vampire, the one who took you. He's here to hunt him down, bring him before the authority in the United States and then he will put a stake through his heart."  
" _Mum_!" I said, shocked. My mother was not the bloodthirsty type.  
"That's what I have written down here," she said mildly.  
"Mum," I said urgently, "Listen to me: if Eric Northman comes to our house, you are not to let him in, do you hear me? He's very old and very clever; he'll wait till he knows you're home alone and he'll try to inveigle an invitation into our house."

It was a quirk of the Kennicks that we could not be glamoured; I don't know if we became vampire hunters because we could not be glamoured or whether we developed immunity because we were vampire hunters (it was a bit of a chicken or egg issue in our family, to be honest), but many of us were singularly resistant to the vampires' best efforts. My mother didn't have any such talents and was doubly cursed with a kindly and trusting nature: she would fall for any sob story, she didn't even need to be glamoured, to be honest.  
"Oh, Maggie," she said with an awkward little laugh.  
"I'm serious: he'll turn up at the door, all hunched over to make you forget that he's nearly seven foot tall and a thousand years old, then he'll flash with his big, sad eyes and you'll feel sorry for him and invite him in."  
My voice rose, panicked, because I knew that's exactly what would happen. "He's not to know where I am! No one knows and that's the way I want to keep it, Mum. I have built a life for myself over here in Ballygar and I don't want it ruined by vampires!"  
My mother said nothing.  
I calmed myself a little. "Is that all?" I asked, subdued.  
There was a little rustle of paper again. "Mr Northman is going to find the vampire who took you, bring him ti justice and then he's going to take you back to Louisiana, back to your place on the throne," she read.  
I couldn't believe my ears. Somewhere, a faint ringing started in the back of my brain.  
She continued, "Things don't run as well without you and he needs you back in Louisiana. So he'll attend to his business with Cor – "  
She stumbled over the name and I could hear a low voice correct her.  
"- with Corbyn, then he's coming for you."  
There was silence and I could hear my own heart.  
"Mum," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper, "Is Eric with you right now?"  
"He is," she said in that same odd voice and I knew, instantly, instantaneously, that Eric had glamoured her witless. "Would you like to speak to him?" she asked pleasantly.

Before I could say a word, Eric said, " _Hej, Magdalena, min älskling_ ," he said, his voice teasing.  
I spluttered, unable to say a word.  
"Ballygar," he said. "I will remember. I will find that bastard Corbyn and then I will come for you. Be ready, my queen."  
And he hung up.  
 _Fuck,_ I thought.

xxx

 _Thank you for reading - keep an eye out for a new story in 2019._


	31. Chapter 31

And so it continues!

The sequel begins here:  
s/13167053/1/The-Carrier-III

Read, favourite it, comment if you like. I'm always interested in your feedback. love to hear your ideas. See you over there ;-)


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